• “Frances Willard (1839-1898). Photographed in her study. The guiding force of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union and founder of the World WCTU. An unfortunate image of primness and prudery cloaks Willard and other temperance leaders. This inaccuracy is worsened by the surviving reports of such as Anna Gordon, a WCTU leader whose biography of Willard cast her in the likeness of a Victorian plaster saint. Actually, she was a rugged and colorful individual of many facets, a champion of world peace, equality for women, and reforms in education and labor. She was instrumental in opening Northwestern University to women and was its first dean of women. Her British colleague Lady Somerset wrote:” “To no special cause did Frances Willard belong; her life was the property of humanity.”
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Frances Willard in Her Study postcard, back, inset photo

From Women Making History: The Revolutionary Feminist Postcard Art of Helaine Victoria Press by Julia M. Allen and Jocelyn H. Cohen

  • Jumbo 5 ½” x 7¼” postcard. Printed by Helaine Victoria Enterprises (original imprint name) at California Institute of the Arts. This was the second printing of Willard in her study, printed on the Rotaprint offset press in purple along with five other postcards on the sheet. Jocelyn Cohen and Nancy Poore discovered the photograph in Glimpses of 50 Years¬, by Frances Willard, 1889, published by Women's Temperance Publication Association, Chicago. It was a beautiful volume with deep green cloth cover with gold and silver gilt titling and decorations.
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  • HISTORY / Women
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