Autograph letter signed by Elizabeth Robins to Lady McLean Suffrage content 1910

ROBINS, Elizabeth (1862-1952). Autograph letter signed to Lady Laura McLaren (1854-1933), praising her speech to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith during the women's suffrage deputation, Hotel Bellevue Dresden, 28 June 1910.
 
Autograph letter signed, dated Dresden, 28 June 1910, written on one side of a single sheet of illustrated Hotel Bellevue letterhead, 145 x 225 mm. Old folds, with a split and short associated tears at the central horizontal fold, slight creasing and minor edge wear; nevertheless a clean and attractive very good letter.
 
A suffrage association letter from the American-born actress, novelist and prominent suffrage campaigner Elizabeth Robins to Lady Laura McLaren, thanking her for an invitation to attend a meeting in London on Monday, 11 July, and warmly praising McLaren's recent address to the Prime Minister:
 
"May I say that I rejoiced exceedingly in the quite masterly speech you addressed to the P.M. on the occasion of the deputation."
 
Lady McLaren had led a deputation of constitutional suffragists to H. H. Asquith on 21 June 1910, when representatives both for and against women's suffrage were received by the Prime Minister. Robins's proposed return to London on 11 July was equally timely, that being the day on which the Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill, commonly known as the Conciliation Bill, received its second reading in the House of Commons.
 
Robins was an important figure in the suffrage movement as a speaker, writer and dramatist. Her play Votes for Women! and its related novel The Convert were among the most influential literary works produced in support of the campaign. Lady McLaren was herself a leading Liberal suffragist and an active organiser within the constitutional movement.