JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER
All rights reserved
Josephine E. Butler
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
EDITED BY
GEORGE W. AND LUCY A. JOHNSON
With Introduction by
JAMES STUART, M.A., LL.D.
SECOND IMPRESSION
BRISTOL
J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street
LONDON
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited
1909
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PREFACE.
It is very difficult worthily to record thehistory of one of the noblest women who everlived, but, having been asked by the Ladies’National Association for the Abolition ofGovernment Regulation of Vice to prepare aMemoir of Mrs. Josephine Butler, we have triedto tell her life story as far as possible in her ownwords, by means of extracts from her writings,with just sufficient thread of explanation tohold them together. The present volume istherefore to a large extent an autobiography,taken chiefly from her Recollections of GeorgeButler, and from Personal Reminiscences of aGreat Crusade; but selections have also beengiven from most of her principal publications,so as to give some idea of her extensive literarywork. We have not included any privateletters, as it was her strongly expressed wishthat these should not be published.
Many of the quotations have been abridged,but they have not otherwise been altered,except in a few cases where dates, etc., havebeen corrected. We have however ventured,vifor the sake of securing a continuous narrative,occasionally to combine passages taken fromdifferent sources.
As this volume is intended to give anaccount of Mrs. Butler’s own life and work, ithas not been possible fully to sketch thehistory of the movement, with which her namewas specially identified, or to allude to manyof those associated with her in that movement,whose labours she so heartily appreciated, andwhose friendship she so greatly valued.
We are much indebted to the editors ofJoséphine E. Butler: Souvenirs et Pensées(Saint-Blaise, Foyer Solidariste, 1908), havingin many cases used the same extracts asare given in that volume. We have alsoto thank Mrs. Butler’s representatives andvarious publishers (Horace Marshall & Son,Macmillan & Co., and others) for permissionto quote from copyright works.
G. W. J.
L. A. J.
May 1st, 1909.
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