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(WOMEN) WOODHULL, Victoria C. The Origin, Tendencies and Principles of Government: Or, A Review of the Rise and Fall of Nations From Early Historic Time to the Present: With Special Considerations Regarding the Future of the United States as the Representative Government of the World....
New York: Woodhull, Claflin & co., 1871. First edition. Tall 8vo., orig. purplish brown cloth, gilt lettering on the upper cover and spine, brown coated e/papers, (60, 247, (1)pp. With an engraved frontis-portrait of Woodhull. Lacking the blank before the frontispiece, there is a stain (a splash from some sort of liquid) measuring approx. 8cm x 5cm that affects the frontis, titlepage, and table of contents, and then extends through p.45 affecting only the outer margin of pp.1-45, the binding is quite worn especially at the corners, and both the head and foot of the spine are chipped away. However, this is still an acceptable copy of an uncommon book.
Victoria Claflin Woodhull [1838-1927] editor, orator, suffragist, and who along with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, were ‘unconventional reformers whose antics jolted Victorian America. 'Woodhull was married to Canning Woodhull, a physician, ‘an apparently respectable but feckless man who was no match for her energies', with whom she had two children. Reuniting with her sister, they practiced and promoted spiritualism (claiming psychic powers themselves), and campaigned for various other causes such as ‘free love', workers' rights, and women's suffrage. Curiously, Cornelius Vanderbilt set them up as stockbrokers and they were quite successful.
Woodhull became involved with the ‘aberrant' philosopher, Stephen Pearl Andrews, a devotee of Swedenborg and an abolitionist, who converted Woodhull to his ‘climatic vision' of the perfect state, ‘where free love reigned among individuals while children and property were managed in common.' She espoused Andrews' notions in the above publication The Origins, Tendencies and Principles of Government. This work is a good example of Woodhull's efforts to capture America's political imagination--it contains several position papers previously published in the New York Herald. Among the issues she addressed are: the history and Constitution of the U.S.; The Origin, Principles, and Tendencies of Government; the Women's Idea of Government; and The Limits and Sphere of Government [Considered from a Female Point of View].
With her sister she founded and published the radical Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly (1870-6), which published the first American translation of Marx's Communist Manifesto in 1872. The weekly also addressed issues such as short skirts, free love, legalized prostitution, housing, and dietary reform. Woodhull was very active in the suffragist movement, and in 1871 she was a contender for the leadership of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her battle with various members of the association led her to hold her own convention in 1872, during which she was ‘acclaimed the presidential nominee of the "Equal Rights" Party'-- becoming the first female presidential candidate.
Also in 1872, Woodhull was embroiled in a scandal, and the sisters were imprisoned for an obscenity charge relating to an article they published about Henry Ward Beecher's ‘double-life.' After their release, Victoria moved to England where she continued to lecture and became a society hostess after her marriage to her third husband, John Biddulph Martin. With her daughter she published journal on eugenics and also published several other volumes. While she visited the United States frequently, Woodhull's residence remained in London, where she died in 1927.
(Notable American Women Vol.III; The Feminist Companion To English Literature; ODNAB).