WHY WOMEN NEED THE VOTE.

Second edition. Publisher's original paper wrappers with titles in black to the upper cover. An almost very good copy, the covers detached from the textblock with a small tear to each cover neatly repaired with tape on the verso and with a little chipping and loss to the spine and edges of the upper cover. The contents are in very good order, clean throughout and remain free from any previous owners' inscriptions or stamps.

A scarce work by the prominent Birmingham suffragist Catherine Osler (née Taylor, 1854-1924), arguing for female suffrage as well as women's wider equality in the realms of work and broader society. Osler grew up in a reformist household, born to Unitarian parents who had been members of the Birmingham Women's Suffrage Society from its formation. Their eldest child, she herself later rose through the ranks of the society, moving from treasurer to secretary in 1885, and then to president in 1903. Although often critical of the actions of the militant suffragettes, in 1909 she resigned as President of the Birmingham Women's Liberal Association in reaction to the Liberal government's policy of force feeding suffragette prisoners. In 1911, she joined the executive committee of one of the leading women's suffrage campaigning organisations, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Today, Osler is commemorated, along with fifty-eight other supporters of women's suffrage, on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018 on the centenary of the achievement of partial female suffrage. Only two institutional copies of this title recorded by Copac (LSE and Leicester). Not in the BL.