Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915) was the Pacific Northwest’s most influential advocate for women’s rights, whose newspapers, the New Northwest and the Pacific Empire, rallied suffragists in the late nineteenth century.
 
Duniway published Edna and John as a serialized novel in the New Northwest beginning in 1876. The novel is presented here in book form for the first time. It is the story of a married couple, Edna and John, who move to the Idaho mountains during the 1860s gold mining frenzy. This atypical western underscores women’s struggles in an era when social and legal codes mainly empowered men.
 
Duniway was a luminary in the struggle for women’s rights, and her serialized novels of the period played a significant role in the enfranchisement of women in the West. Even today, Edna and John serves to encourage readers to challenge injustice and inequality and to appreciate the courage and determination of the pioneer suffragists.
 
Edited with an afterword by Debra Shein.
 
(217 pages)