JULIA WARD HOWE - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 01/15/1900 - HFSID 16400

JULIA WARD HOWE
Howe handwrote, signed and dated this letter in 1900 to a Mrs. Phillips. In it, she accepts Phillip's invitation to dinner - if she can make it from a speech at "George school" in Philadelphia, that is - and talks about her two daughters.
Autograph letter signed "Julia Ward Howe." With pencil notations in lower left corner of page 3 in unknown hand. 3 pages, 7¾x6 (unfolded), 1 page folded, front and verso. Jan. 15, 1900. Addressed to "Mrs Phillips".In full: "Dear Mrs Phillips, Thanks for your kind note. I shall certainly be glad to meet your friends at dinner. You know perhaps that I am to speak at George school in the evening of the 25th. You will know whether I can get to you from there on the 26th in time for dinner. I am very much in the dark about the geogra-phy of your region, and have yet to hear how I am to reach George school from Phila-delphia, which I sup-pose to be my first objective point. My dear daughter, Mrs Richards, lives always in Gardiner, Maine. My daughter Mrs Hall lives in Plainfield, N J., but is so full of business on her own account that she would hardly feel able to accompany me if, as I suppose, your very kind invitation would hold good for her. Hoping very much to reach you in good time and with regards to your husband, believe me Yours sincerely,". Howe (1819-1910, born in New York City), a social reformer and poet, is best known for writing the poem The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which she was inspired to write after visiting army camps in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. Howe's poem, first published in the February 1862 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, was later set to music to the tune of the popular antislavery song John Brown's Body and became the unofficial song of the Union Army. Howe later turned her fervor against slavery into a crusade for women's rights. She was a co-founder (1868) and first President of the New England Woman's Suffrage Association, co-led (with Lucy Stone) the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869) and founded the Women's International Peace Association (1871). In 1870, Howe assisted Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, to establish the Woman's Journal, and served as an editor and writer for the publication for 20 years. Howe, who also wrote poems for other women's journals and founded the Boston Authors Club, was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1908). Lightly toned. Folded once and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.