Posted 9:30 a.m. Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Lily (Accessible Archives)
The Lily, the first newspaper for women, was issued from 1849 until 1853 under the editorship of Amelia Bloomer. Published in Seneca Falls, New York, the newspaper began as a temperance journal for “home distribution” among members of the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society, which had formed in 1848. But gradually the newspaper began to include articles about other subjects of interest to women, many from the pen of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pseudonym “sunflower.” Her earliest articles dealt with temperance, child-bearing and education, but she soon turned to the issue of women’s rights, writing about laws unfair to women and demanding change.