Autograph Letter, Signed. 2pp, signed, to Parker Pillsbury, Dec. 8th, 1895

New York, December 8th, [1895?]. Autograph letter, signed, on recto and verso of single cream laid sheet (22x14.5cm.); approx. 85 words; dated 26 West 61st, N.Y., Dec 8th, and simply addressed to "Parker," presumably Stanton's friend and fellow-suffragist Parker Pillsbury (1809-1898), who, with Stanton, had co-edited the women's rights newsletter "The Revolution" twenty years earlier. Faint mail folds, small unobtrusive archival paper remnants to two corners from having been previously mounted, else Near Fine and still quite fresh. Brief contemporary (1897) pencil note at bottom edge "Mrs. Stanton - born Nov. 12, 1815, Now past 82 - C.E.R.," though based (truncated) on contents we would place this letter as having been written around 1895. Brief but significant missive addressed to Parker Pillsbury, the American minister and women's suffrage advocate, regarding a copy of Stanton's "Woman's Bible" she had just sent him. "I wonder if I could interest them [a "Mrs. White" and one other] sufficiently in the Woman's Bible to sell ten or twenty copies in there [sic] respective woman's clubs? It is published at my expense, hence I am trying to push its circulation." The controversial "Woman's Bible," a series of commentaries pertaining to the portions of the Bible relating to women, was published in two parts, in 1895 and 1898, and composed almost entirely by Stanton alone, her committee of Bible revisors finding the project too controversial and harmful to the cause of women's suffrage. Clearly at the time of writing this letter the book was still meeting with resistance (thus our placing the date at around 1895), Stanton turning to Pillsbury as a potential source of influential and wealthy patrons (she inquires "Is Mrs. White still living & working? Is that rich woman that Mr. [illegible] used to visit in Maine living?"). But by 1897 the book had become a best seller, though many of the members of the women's suffrage movement would continue to distance themselves from it. This letter quite significant as a testimony to the aging Stanton, organizer of the historical 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and her continuing indefatigable efforts, and initial lack of support, in getting this work circulated. (See Tracy A. Thomas, "Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundation of Family Law" (2016), pp. 15 & 223.). (Inventory #: 44165)