The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose

This revelatory biography revises the history of the 19th-century women's rights movement in America by restoring to center stage one of its key movers and shakers, Ernestine Rose. Born Ernestine Potowski, a rabbi's daughter, in 1810 in Poland, she lived in Berlin, and in London where she became a follower of communitarian socialist Robert Owen, before moving to New York in 1836 with English husband William Rose. By 1860 she was one of the best-known women's rights advocates, an antislavery crusader, a principal organizer of the annual national feminist conventions and arguably the movement's most brilliant orator, sharing platforms with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. So why is Rose virtually forgotten today? Kolmerten, professor of English at Hood College in Maryland, maintains that Rose's sarcastic wit, her combativeness, her foreign accent, her Jewish and Polish background (she was perceived as Jewish, despite being an outspoken freethinking atheist) all made her an outsider, a target of both anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic prejudice. Tiring of internecine political wrangles and of the virulently racist language used by Stanton and Anthony in their campaign to secure the vote for women, Rose, with her husband, moved back to London in 1869, where she continued to agitate for women's rights until her death in 1892. Although the narrative is sometimes dry, a problem that stems from Rose's lifelong reticence about her personal life, the activist's idealism, sharp tongue and refusal to compromise are nonetheless inspirational. Illustrated. (Dec.) FYI: This book launches a new Syracuse Univ. Press series, Writing American Women, which will include feminist biographies, ethnic anthologies and essay collections. Kolmerten is the series editor.