Sale 2517 - Printed & Manuscript Americana, September 26, 2019

249 c   (WOMEN’S HISTORY.) Typescript of Gloria Steinem’s important “Living the Revolution” speech, with related family letters and documents. 8 items, various sizes and conditions; minimal wear to “Living the Revolution” other than a faint paper clip rust mark, letters generally with minor wear, with more wear to sister Susanne’s 1941 essay. Vp, 1941-77 and undated [5,000/7,500] The feminist icon Gloria Steinem (born 1934) was born in Toledo, OH, graduated from Smith College in 1956, and gained increasing fame as a journalist and activist through the 1960s and early 1970s. One of her best-known speeches was “Living the Revolution,” a commencement address at Vassar College which she delivered on 31 May 1970: “Women’s Liberation is not destroying the American family, it is trying to build a human, compassionate alternative out of its ruins. . . . Women have a special opportunity to live the revolution. By refusing to play their traditional role, they upset and displace the social structure around them. . . . You don’t have to play one role, in this revolutionary age above all others. If you’re willing to pay the price for it, you can do anything you want to do. And the price is worth it.” The speech has been frequently reprinted and anthologized. Offered here is an original 13-page staple-bound typescript, apparently prepared for publication. 7 of the pages have pencil corrections, very likely in Steinem’s hand. The typescript, on Sphinx Erasable bond paper, is undated and unsigned, but appears to date from the early 1970s. The earliest publication of the speech we can trace, in the 1970 Congressional Record, has a passage reading “Internalized Aggression has for years been evident in Negroes.” This typescript on page 8 has a pencil correction changing “Negroes” to “black people”—a change which is followed in all subsequent appearances including a 1972 textbook, “The Rhetorical Dialogue: Contemporary Concepts and Cases.”