The Suffrage Annual *a suffragette's copy* edited by A.J.R 1913

A.J.R. [editor]. The Suffrage Annual and Women's Who's Who.
 
*Association Copy of Suffragist Dora E. Wingrove Cooke.* 
 
London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1913.
 
First and only edition. Octavo. Original purple cloth, lettered in black to the upper board and spine, with advertisements for Selfridge & Co. and The Ladies' Field printed to the boards. pp. 405, [3] advertisements. Inscribed to the front pastedown "D. E. Cooke", with a note directing the reader to page 400, where her biographical entry appears and has been marked in the margin. Boards marked, rubbed and unevenly faded, with wear to the spine ends and corners. Sporadic moderate to heavy foxing, particularly to the preliminary and final leaves, although many pages remain largely clean. A good copy.
 
A scarce contemporary record of the British women's suffrage movement, published during the height of militant activity in 1913 and containing biographies of almost 1,000 women involved in the campaign. The volume was intended both as an annual survey of the movement and as a practical directory, recording the addresses, officers, membership and activities of suffrage organisations throughout Britain and overseas.
 
The extensive Women's Who's Who includes entries for leading campaigners including Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, Emily Wilding Davison, Charlotte Despard, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and many hundreds of less frequently documented activists. The entry for Emily Wilding Davison, published during the year of her death, records in striking detail her imprisonments, hunger strikes, forcible feeding and militant actions.
 
This copy belonged to Dora E. Wingrove Cooke, formerly Dora E. Armitage, whose entry appears on page 400 and has been marked by her. Cooke was active in both the Australian and British women's movements and served as Acting Honorary Secretary of the Australian and New Zealand Women Voters' Association. After moving to Sydney in 1887 she established classes connected with the Exhibition of Women's Industries and opened what the volume describes as the city's first copying office for women, training educated women for secretarial employment. She was also associated with the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association.
 
The identity of the editor, who is named on the title page only by the initials "A.J.R.", does not appear to have been established. The work was apparently the only issue published and remains an important contemporary reference for the organisation and personnel of the suffrage movement.