Anna Elizabeth Dickinson
(1842-1932)

Dickinson, Anna Elizabeth (1842-1932) was born to orthodox Quaker parents in Philadelphia, PA on October 28th. Her mother was from an aristocratic family and very refined. When Anna was an infant the family lost their property and were forced into poverty. She was educated at the Friends’ Select School of Philadelphia. Her father was dedicated to the abolition movement and died after giving a rousing antislavery speech in 1844 when Anna was just two years old. Although she never knew her father, his death while fighting for the abolition cause may have contributed to her own efforts at any early age when she developed a reputation for her outspokenness. She was a restless, willful, yet imaginative child that caused her family much anxiety.

When she was 14 she published an essay on "Slavery" in the Boston newspaper The Liberator. This caught the attention of the paper’s editor, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and she was subsequently invited to share the platform with him during a speaking engagement in Philadelphia in October 1861 when she spoke on "The Rights and Wrongs of Women". Her emotionally blistering rhetoric, charisma, and intelligence impressed him greatly. With Garrison’s assistance she obtained further speaking engagements across the United States where she spoke on antislavery, women’s rights, universal education and politics.

Her rising celebrity status as a fiery young orator led her to closer ties with the Republican leadership and she was called upon to speak on behalf of Republicans up for election at the state level. She was credited with helping the Republicans pull through to victory and redistributing the political power in the Union after the 1863 elections. As a result of her extraordinary efforts she was nicknamed the "Joan of Arc" of the Union cause and honored with having been the only woman up to that time to be invited to speak before Congress where President and Mrs. Lincoln were in attendance.

After the Civil War she fought for voting rights, but unlike Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who devoted their energies in support of women’s rights, Anna sided with suffrage for African American men. At the height of her lecturing career she made as much as $20,000 a year, more than Mark Twain was getting at the time.

When her popularity as a lecturer started to dwindled in the early 1870’s she turned to the stage and had a brief career as an actress. In May 1876 she appeared in Boston in a play of her own about Anne Boleyn called Crown of Thorns, but both she and the play were dismissed by the critics. She wrote several other plays, most of which remained unpublished and unproduced, although Fanny Davenport did have a success in 1880 in her An American Girl. After she was ridiculed for her appearance as Hamlet, Dickinson retired from the stage.

When the play finally debuted on March 4, 1877, it was clear to theatre goers and critics alike that Miss Dickinson was neither an actress nor a playwright. The press was scathing and despite a lengthy curtain speech on March 10, 1877 in which Miss Dickinson challenged the judgment of the New York critics, Crown of Thorns folded early. Young Haworth was unemployed, and in a strange and unfamiliar city.