The massive size of the original six- volume History of Woman Suffrage has likely limited its impact on the lives of the women who benefitted from the efforts of the pioneering suffragists. By collecting miscellanies like state suffrage reports and speeches of every sort without interpretation or restraint, the set was often neglected as impenetrable.

In their Concise History of Woman Suffrage, Mari Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle have revitalized this classic text by carefully selecting from among its best material. The eighty-two chosen documents now include interpretative introductory material by the editors, giving researchers easy access to material that the original work's arrangement often caused readers to ignore or to overlook. The volume contains the work of many reform agitators, among them Angelina Grimké, Lucy Stone, Carrie Chapman Catt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Howard Shaw, Jane Addams, Sojourner Truth, and Victoria Woodhull, as well as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper. MARI JO BUHLE is William R. Kenan Jr. University Professor in the history department at Brown University, and the author of Feminism and Psychoanalysis. PAUL BUHLE, Senior Lecturer in history and American civilization at Brown, is the author of The Wobblies: A Graphic History and many other books.