LYTTON, Constance.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Autograph working manuscript on militant suffragism. A vivid account of the author and activist's "conversion" to suffragette tactics, later adapted for Chapter 2 of her 1914 Prisons and Prisoners. The manuscript can be dated to Lytton's first period of writing in the autumn of 1911 from her handwriting; in 1912, she suffered a stroke that paralysed her right side, and she wrote with her left hand thereafter.In the late summer of 1911, Lytton retreated from public activism to focus on writing Prisons and Prisoners, which she hoped "would reach a far wider audience than she would ever have access to otherwise" (Jenkins, p. 182). On 22 August she wrote to fellow suffragette Rose Lamartine Yates: "I want to write my book, impossible [to] combine this with meetings". On 18 September, she wrote again to Yates: "Till [the] book is finished - which it isn't nearly yet - [I] can't engage myself for anything else". However, government backtracking over women's suffrage motivated Lytton back into full WSPU participation in November, and Prisons and Prisoners was put on pause. Her stroke, often attributed to harm suffered during force-feeding, further delayed the project. She recommenced writing in January 1913, after having taught herself to use her left hand.Lytton pinpoints the start of her conversion to the late summer of 1908, when she met Annie Kenney and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence at a weekend retreat. By then, Lytton supported women's suffrage, but not militancy. One wet evening,

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