Apr 10, 2025 - Sale 2699

Sale 2699 - Lot 109

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
"I…PROMOTE THE ADMISSION OF WOMEN…TO…RIGHTS ON THE SAME CONDITIONS AS MEN" MILL, JOHN STUART. Autograph Letter Signed, "J.S. Mill," to "Mrs. Speight," professing to promote women's suffrage as well as women's claim to all other rights enjoyed by men, expressing disappointment in failure of suffrage legislation in KS, and expecting rapid progress there and elsewhere. 3 pages, 8vo, written on a folded sheet, stationary embossed with his monogram; remnants of cello tape hinging at upper edge of third page, remnants of mounting on terminal page along center vertical fold, horizontal folds. Avignon, 16 December 1867
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"I beg to . . . express my strong sympathy with the feelings you express respecting the claim of women to the suffrage. Both in my place in Parliament, in my writings, and by every other influence I possess, I have long done the best I could to promote the admission of women not only to political but to all other rights on the same conditions as men. I intend to persevere in this course and I am happy to say that in my own country as well as in the United States, the cause is making far more rapid progress than I thought even a short time ago that there was any probability of its making in my lifetime. I am disappointed at the rejection, by the people of Kansas, of the measure proposed to them by their legislature on this subject; but I am confident that its adoption in that and probably in some other states of the Union will not be long delayed."
On November 5, 1867, the Kansas Women's Suffrage Amendment was defeated in the state legislature with 69% of the vote. An amendment of the same name was ratified on August 18, 1920, when 52% of the voters expressed their approval of it, finally granting the right to vote to the women of Kansas.
Published in 1869, Mill's essay, The Subjection of Women, presented his ideas and those of his late wife--women's rights activist Harriet Taylor Mill--concerning the equal treatment of women and men in all spheres of life.