LYTTON, Constance.

£1,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Letters. First edition of the collected correspondence of the women's suffrage campaigner Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton (1869-1923). The editor was Lytton's sister and a fellow women's suffrage activist, although she did not condone the use of militant tactics.After visiting suffragettes imprisoned in Holloway gaol in 1909, Lytton joined the WSPU and thereafter was a fervent lobbyist, using her influential aristocratic contacts on behalf of the suffrage cause. She was arrested twice due to her protest activities but treated leniently, which she suspected was due to her upper-class status. To test class bias in the treatment of suffragette prisoners, Lytton assumed the disguise of a working woman, "Jane Warton", for her next protest. She was subsequently arrested and sent to Walton goal, where she went on hunger strike and was force-fed eight times before her release, with no medical examination. This proved her point, but subsequently caused a heart attack, stroke, and ultimately her early death in 1923. "Her letters, published after her death, are a moving monument to an unpretentious, spiritual, and quintessentially private woman, whose life was almost accidentally invaded by a great public cause" (ODNB).

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