JULIA WARD HOWE - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED - HFSID 16401

JULIA WARD HOWE
Howe handwrote and signed this letter to Mr. Siles, letting him know that "my copy will over-run 450 pages of my writing".
With pencil notations at bottom edge and on verso and erased pencil notations near top edge, all in unknown hand. Stamped at top in purple ink: "Robert Brothers,/Publishers,/Boston.". Dated "Monday". Addressed to "Mr. Siles".In full: "Dear Mr. Siles, I do not think that my copy will over-run 450 pages of my writing. Yr's truly,".Although this letter is undated, it's possible that it refers to the book Sex and education: A reply to Dr. E. H. Clarke's "Sex in education", a collection of essays published in 1874 by Roberts Brothers in Boston, Massachusetts. Her article - which ran 19 pages, not 450 - is unequivocal about Clarke: "Is the book, then, a work of science, of literature, or of philosophy, or is it a simple practical treatise on the care of health? We should call it none of these. It has neither the impartiality of science, the form of literature, the breadth of philosophy, nor the friendliness of counsel. It is a work of the polemic type, presenting a persistent and passionate plea against the admission of women to a collegiate education in common with men." 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 and creased. Folded once and unfolded. Light nick at bottom edge of fold. Otherwise in fine condition.