Suffragettes.- Pankhurst (Sylvia, editor) The Woman's Dreadnought, 47 issues only, comprising: Special Advance Number, 8pp., March 8 1914, no.1-21 and 23-47, all issues 4pp., except issue 41 with 8pp., illustration to p.1 of each issue, many issues frayed, torn (especially at fold) or chipped at edges, issue 2 torn in half, issue 14 browned along and around fold, but text for the most part unaffected and legible, preserved in later portfolio, folio (445 x 287mm.), East London Federation of the Suffragettes, March 8th 1914 - February 6th 1915.

⁂ Extremely rare and near-complete run of this highly important suffragette newspaper, missing only one issue (number 22, August 15th 1914) from the first 47, and here together with the Special Advance Number. The periodical appeared fortnightly under the editorship of Sylvia Pankhurst during the build-up to and first few months of the First World War. Much of the suffragette movement rallied behind the government at the beginning of the war, but Sylvia took a different path, diverging from her patriotic mother and sister to set up a working-class suffragette movement in the East End of London, producing this publication, which soon changed its name to The Workers' Dreadnought with more overtly socialist leanings and later being adopted as the official organ of the British Communist Party. Despite a claimed circulation of 20,000, these early issues seem exceptionally rare and we can trace no issues appearing for sale at auction.