Scholar Sara Catterall will discuss her new biography of the oft-misinterpreted activist Amelia Bloomer.

Amelia Bloomer (1818–1894) is best known now for the garments that bear her name. But rational dress was “but an incident” in her life and career, and the last thing she wanted to be remembered for. From a village childhood and minimal education in Central New York, Bloomer became a key figure in the temperance and women’s rights movements. She was publisher and editor of The Lily, the U.S.’s first newspaper by and for women, which became a vital information hub and source of community for progressive women. She introduced her friends and collaborators Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, held a groundbreaking position as deputy postmaster of Seneca Falls, and, despite scandal and chronic illness, she continued to speak, organize, write, and travel East to participate in national meetings after her move to the frontier town of Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Sara Catterall’s new book, Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-Fashion Icon (Belt Publishing), is the first fully researched biography of Bloomer since one published in 1895 by her widower Dexter Bloomer. At this illustrated talk, Catterall’s book will be available for purchase and signing. A starred review in Booklist called it “A timely and exhaustively researched biography . . . that resonate[s], given our current political climate.”

The Center at West Park
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024

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Catterall is a writer with a Drama degree from NYU and an MLIS from Syracuse University. She was born in Ankara and grew up in South Minneapolis. She has worked as a librarian at Cornell University, a reviewer and interviewer for Shelf Awareness, and a book indexer. Her work has been published in the NEH’s Humanities magazine and The Sun magazine, and she co-authored Ottoman Dress and Design in the West: A Visual History of Cultural Exchange. She lives with her family near Ithaca, NY.

📷 “The Bloomer Costume,” N. Currier (New York), 1851; The Library of Congress

📷 Courtesy of the author