Women's Suffrage: Five Rare Books for Collectors

Highlights from Bonhams' Deeds Not Words: Women's Suffrage Part II online auction which runs until March 12 includes:

* Votes for Catharine, Susan and Me by Kathleen Ainslie 

First edition (Castell Brothers Ltd., c.1910), 11 full-page chromolithographed illustrations (one double-page) of the only contemporary children's book to feature the suffragette movement, one of a series of books with characters inspired by the Dutch peg dolls popular at the time. It tells the tale of two militant Suffragette dolls who are arrested during a demonstration and then sent to prison where they go on hunger strike. They are eventually released and told to "go home quietly" after being visited by the Home Secretary and the Prison Governor.

* Cassell's Annual for Boys and Girls and Atalanta

Cassell's Annual for Boys and Girls (Cassell & Co., 1914) includes The Adventures of Edward the Red Teddy Bear by Murray Fisher and illustrated by Frank Hart, the only suffragette story in a children's annual, in which Nancy the Dutch Doll dons suffragette colours, bites a policeman, gets arrested, and goes on hunger strike. Atalanta, volume 2 only (October 1888 to September 1889) was a London-based monthly magazine for girls, founded and edited by Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844-1914), a feminist and member of the Pioneer Club, who also wrote fiction for girls.

* The Adventures of a Woman in Search of Her Rights by Florence Claxton

Caxton (1838-1920) was an artist and humorist known for satirising the Pre-Raphaelite movement and signing a petition asking the Royal Academy of Arts to open its doors to women. Woman in Search of her Rights (Lee & Shepard, Boston & NY, 1871) is a satirical cartoon on women's rights, ending with the line 'Thank goodness it's only a midsummer night's dream and I'm not emancipated' concluding the events in the book were only a dream.