Abstract
The women's suffrage movement engaged with art in many different ways, enabling campaigners to express their political views as well as generating publicity for the cause. This chapter discusses the movement's engagement with art in terms of literature, the visual arts, music and drama, indicating how early feminist activists worked in these different fields in collective support of the campaign. It provides a brief outline of the women's suffrage movement in the UK and its key organisations, identifying some of the previous scholarship in the field. It also offers an overview of the contents of the volume, concluding with a one-paragraph summary of each of its chapters in turn. The women's suffrage movement, emerging in the second half of the nineteenth century and gaining momentum in the early twentieth century, engaged with art in myriad ways. Art, in its widest sense, enabled campaigners to express their personal ideologies as well as generate invaluable publicity for the women's cause. Sending a postcard of a women's suffrage poster or a photograph of one of the movement's leaders, or serving afternoon tea to one's guests using a china tea set adorned with the colours and emblems of women's suffrage, effectively constituted a political act. In high street shops dedicated to women's suffrage, as well as regional offices, objets d'art and artistic keepsakes (some of them, such as pin badges, reasonably priced so as to attract women of low income) were available as merchandise, providing a useful