The Queen of the Platform

Higginbotham (The Traitor’s Wife) offers a stirring tale of suffragette and abolitionist Ernestine Rose (1810–1892), a contemporary of Susan B. Anthony. In 1822 Poland, Ernestine refuses the marriage arranged by her rabbi father, to take place when she’s 16, telling him, “It is unjust for women to be traded like cattle.” Pursuing her desire to travel the world, she moves to Berlin the next year to live with her sister. There, she invents and sells perfumed paper and teaches languages to support herself, and continues to speak out against societal restrictions on women. In Paris, she makes bullets for France’s Revolution of 1830, then moves to London, where she meets textile manufacturer and social reformer Robert Owen and his colleague, silversmith and fellow atheist William Rose. Ernestine gives her first public speech to condemn the Reform Act of 1832, the first British law to officially bar women from voting. After she marries William, the couple moves to New York City, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton dubs her “queen of the platform” for her fiery and witty lectures on women’s suffrage and abolition. In Higginbotham’s capable hands, Ernestine emerges as a well-rounded character and a figure worthy of more attention. It’s a satisfying portrait. (Self-published)