Helen Kendrick Johnson

author

Helen Kendrick Johnson

1844–1917

A prolific American writer and editor, she is remembered both for her poetry and children’s writing and for her outspoken campaign against woman suffrage. Her life and work offer a revealing window into the cultural arguments of late 19th-century America.

1 Audiobook

Woman and the Republic A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates

Woman and the Republic A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates

by Helen Kendrick Johnson

About the author

Born in Hamilton, New York, Helen Kendrick Johnson was the daughter of scholar Asahel Clark Kendrick. After her mother died when Helen was young, she spent parts of her childhood with relatives in New York and later in Georgia during the Civil War.

She built a busy literary career as a writer, poet, and editor. Johnson contributed children’s literature and travel writing, edited The American Woman’s Journal in the 1890s, and published books including Tears for the Little Ones and Woman and the Republic.

She is now most often noted for her public opposition to the woman suffrage movement. That stance made her a prominent anti-suffrage voice in her day, while also placing her in one of the most contested debates in American social and political history.