Women's Reform Movement

Ginzberg, Lori. Women in Antebellum Reform. Wheeling, IL: Harland Davidson, 2000. This is a compact, readable, and reliable survey of the role of women in antebellum reform, and one that pays attention to class and religious differences among them. The treatment of Seneca Falls and the Women's Rights Movement is brief, but rich.

Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830–1870: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2000. This slender book does double duty. It provides an exploration of the links between abolitionism and Women's Rights and a well-selected collection of primary source materials.

Sklar, Kathryn Kish and James Brewer Stewart, eds. Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Increasingly, scholars are turning attention to important connections between American and European reformers, connections that sometimes revealed sharp differences as well as commitments to a common cause. This collection is an excellent introduction to the subject of transatlantic reform.

Yee, Shirley. Black Women Abolitionists. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1992. Professor Yee's book is valuable for moving beyond the towering figure of Sojourner Truth to bring to light the impressive work and lives of other black women abolitionists. It helps the reader see another layer of complexity in struggles for racial and gender equality.

Yellen, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horn, eds. The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Although the focus in most textbooks is on the emergence of a Women's Rights Movement and the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, they also acknowledge a much wider universe of women's involvement in antebellum reform. The Abolitionist Sisterhood helps simultaneously to trace the abolitionism to Women's Rights connection and to grasp the wider range of "women's political culture."