JULIA WARD HOWE - AUTOGRAPH QUOTATION SIGNED 03/18/1860 - HFSID 172992

JULIA WARD HOWE
Howe handwrote, signed and dated this quotation in Boston in 1860, two years before The Atlantic Monthly published her Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Autograph quote signd "Julia Ward Howe.". 1 page, 8x5. Boston, Massachusetts, March 18, 1860. In full: "All heights of Life are wearisome to gain-/Yield not for pleasure what you won with pain." Howe was an unsuccessful poet and playwright in 1860. But her life and reputation took off shortly after she wrote this quotation. In February of 1861, she visited an Army camp near Washington, DC, where she wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. This was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February of 1862, and the rest, as they say, is history. 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, soiled, stained and creased. Random ink stains. Nicks on near top right corner. Quotation was neatly torn from a larger sheet at bottom edge. Folded in quarters and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.