THE LIFE AND WORK OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY INCLUDING PUBLIC ADDRESSES, HER OWN LETTERS AND MANY FROM HER CONTEMPORARIES DURING FIFTY YEARS. A STORY OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE STATUS OF WOMAN

Indianapolis & Kansas City: The Bowen-Merrill Co., 1899 & 1898. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine copies with a fine association. The first two volumes of three, with the last not published until 1908, two years after Anthony's death. Original full brown-burgundy morocco leather with a gilt medallion profile portrait of Anthony on the front panel of each volume, recently and sympathetically rebacked with similar color morocco leather; all edges gilt. Illustrated with frontispiece portraits of Anthony and other plates and facsimiles. Each volume is INSCRIBED and SIGNED by this principal leader of the woman suffrage movement in the United States on the front endpapers to another well-known suffragist. In the first volume, Anthony has written: "Yes indeed, Mrs. Julia L. Langdon Barber/I will write your name upon this/fly-leaf together with my own for/the benefit of the grand-daughter -- when/she is grown up to appreciate the worth/of each--/Julia L. Langdon Barber--/Belmont -- Washington, D. C.--/Susan B. Anthony -- Rochester N.Y./May 22, 1901--." Anthony has also INSCRIBED the second volume: "Julia L. Langdon Barber--/Belmont -- Washington, D. C.--/Susan B. Anthony/17 Madison Street -- Rochester N.Y." Books inscribed by this great American have become quite scarce.

Julia L. Langdon was a prominent suffragist in Washington as well as one of the city's premier hostesses of the Golden Age. She married Amzi Lorenzo Barber in 1871; she was the daughter of a prominent N.Y. land developer, and her husband, who had been in charge of the normal department at Howard University, tried his own hand at developments in Washington. He developed the highly restricted Le Droit Park neighborhood just off Florida Avenue, and was soon to be the owner of Barber Asphalt Company; he became known as the "Asphalt King," and by the 1880s his firm was the world's largest supplier of asphalt. Barber was to later buy the infant Locomobile enterprise from Francis and Freelan Stanley in 1898; by 1900, over 1600 cars were sold, but the car's indifferent sales in future years eventually stripped Barber of much of his personal wealth. In 1880 the Barbers bought 120 acres along Florida Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, where their lavish Queen Anne home, "Belmont," was built (It was torn down in 1915 after the deaths of Amzi and Julia Barber to make way for the Clifton Terrace development.). Julia L. Langdon Barber was a Life Member of the National American Women Suffrage Association and a longtime friend of Anthony; after the 1902 National American Convention held at the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, Anthony spent the following week at the Barber home. In the third volume of Harper's book, she is cited, along with Mrs. John Henderson and Anthony, in the incorporation in 1900 of the Standing Fund to help with the work of enfranchising women. Barber was also a friend of Mark Twain, whom she met on the steamship "Quaker City" in 1867 during the trip which Twain chronicled in THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. Barber had taken a leading part in various public movements and was an ardent suffragist and a leading member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She was long the terror of cruelly inclined drivers in Washington. She often took her stand on top of the high tower of Belmont which overlooks a wide range of the city and watched for horses which were being treated cruelly. She always kept an automobile at her door and frequently hurried in it to aid of the suffering horses. She appeared in police court a number of times against men who mistreated animals.