1859 Women's Rights Convention NYC, Dickens Tale of Two Cities, Italian War — Jun 11

🗞️ HARPER'S WEEKLY · June 11, 1859
Complete Issue · New York

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A historically significant Antebellum issue — a full-page illustration of the Women's Rights Convention at Mozart Hall in New York City, published two years before the Civil War suspended the women's rights movement for a decade; illustrations of the Italian War; New York's floating hospital; and a continuing Dickens serialization. A primary document of the early women's rights movement at one of its key annual conventions.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✊ WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION — MOZART HALL, NEW YORK
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

👩 FULL PAGE — "YE MAY SESSION OF YE WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION" — MOZART HALL, NEW YORK CITY
A full-page illustration of the Women's Rights Convention at Mozart Hall in New York City — one of the annual National Women's Rights Conventions that had been held every year since 1850, bringing together the leading voices of the women's suffrage and rights movement. The 1859 convention — held in May at Mozart Hall on Broadway — featured speakers including Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and other pioneers of the movement who were demanding voting rights, property rights, and legal equality for women. Harper's Weekly's use of the archaic "Ye" framing signals its comic-satirical treatment of the convention — a reflection of mainstream society's ambivalence about women's rights in 1859. But the illustration itself is a primary document of the organized women's rights movement at a pivotal moment: the Civil War would soon consume the nation's reform energies, and it would be another sixty years before women won the vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920. A significant piece of women's rights history, suffrage history, and American social reform history.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📚 CHARLES DICKENS — "A TALE OF TWO CITIES" CONTINUES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✍️ CONTINUING SERIALIZATION — "A TALE OF TWO CITIES" BY CHARLES DICKENS
A continuing installment of A Tale of Two Cities — the novel whose themes of social justice and women's sacrifice resonate alongside the Women's Rights Convention content in this same issue. A significant piece of Victorian literary history.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏥 THE FLOATING HOSPITAL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🚢 TEXT AND THREE ILLUSTRATIONS — "THE FLOATING HOSPITAL IN THE LOWER BAY" — NEW YORK
Three illustrations of New York's Floating Hospital — the remarkable vessel that took sick children from the sweltering tenements of lower Manhattan out into the cool breezes of New York Harbor and Lower Bay for fresh air and medical treatment, one of the great philanthropic innovations of Gilded Age New York. The Floating Hospital was founded in 1875 but its precursors in 1859 were already operating — a significant piece of New York City public health and maritime charity history.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🖼️ INSIDE THE ISSUE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🐟 FRONT PAGE — "THE TALKING FISH" AND "THE FIGHTING TIGER OF KING OF OUDE"
Two front-page curiosity illustrations — a talking fish and a fighting tiger from the court of the exiled King of Oudh — vivid pieces of Victorian natural history curiosity and South Asian history, the King of Oudh having been deposed by the British East India Company during the annexation of 1856.

⚔️ SEVERAL ILLUSTRATIONS — THE WAR IN EUROPE
Illustrations of the ongoing Second Italian War of Independence — continuing Harper's Weekly's comprehensive coverage of the Risorgimento campaign.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📋 CONDITION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I photograph every page of every issue so you can inspect the condition closely before purchasing. Please review all images carefully and don't hesitate to ask any questions — I'm happy to provide additional detail or close-up shots of any page, illustration, or area of concern before you buy.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📌 DETAILS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Publication ········ Harper's Weekly
Date ··············· June 11, 1859
City ··············· New York
Format ············· Illustrated newspaper, complete in 16 pages

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📦 SHIPPING & PRESERVATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Stored in an acid-free protective bag and flat-shipped in a padded envelope with heavy cardboard reinforcement
• Fully tracked for your peace of mind

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔍 SEO TAGS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Women's Rights Convention 1859, Woman's Rights Convention antique, Mozart Hall women's rights, National Women's Rights Convention, women's suffrage 1859 antique, Lucy Stone Susan Anthony antique, women's rights antebellum, suffrage convention antique, women's rights primary document, Victorian women's rights antique, women vote antebellum antique, women's rights history, Dickens Tale Two Cities antique, Dickens serialization antique, floating hospital New York, New York floating hospital, Lower Bay hospital antique, talking fish antique, King Oude tiger antique, Italian war illustrations, Risorgimento antique, Harper's Weekly 1859, antique newspaper 1859, antebellum newspaper, Victorian illustrated newspaper, antique illustration engraving, framing quality print, women's rights collector, suffrage collector, history lover gift, rare newspaper collectible, museum quality ephemera