PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED

Photograph. Dampstaining nearly entirely restricted to the margins and mostly visible on the rear, hardly affecting the photograph and not touching Howe's signature. Very Good. A fairly large image (7-1/4" x 9-1/4") mounted on 10" x 13" stiff board with the photographer's stamp at the bottom center "Alman & Co./436 Fifth Ave., N.Y./and Newport, R.I." depicting an elderly Howe holding a baby and surrounded by three family members including her two daughters who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of their mother. SIGNED in ink below the image: "Julia Ward Howe/Jan. 26th, 1904." The verso of the photograph is SIGNED by one of those daughters, Laura Richards: "Mrs. Henry Richards/Gardiner, Maine."

Howe, active in the women's suffrage movement, is perhaps best known as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," written at night near the beleaguered capital of Washington at the beginning of the Civil War. It earned her the grand total of $5 upon its publication in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY along with the added bonus of instant and lasting fame. Later she became president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association as well as the Association of the Advancement of Women. Howe was honored as the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908, two years before her death at 91. Signed photographs of Howe are quite scarce.