The first essay in this volume, "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?"
appeared originally in the "Atlantic Monthly" of February, 1859, and has
since been reprinted in various forms, bearing its share, I trust, in the
great development of more liberal views in respect to the training and
duties of women which has made itself manifest within forty years. There
was, for instance, a report that it was the perusal of this essay which led
the late Miss Sophia Smith to the founding of the women's college bearing
her name at Northampton, Massachusetts.
The remaining papers in the volume formed originally a part of a book
entitled "Common Sense About Women" which was made up largely of papers
from the "Woman's Journal." This book was first published in 1881 and was
reprinted in somewhat abridged form some years later in London
(Sonnenschein). It must have attained a considerable circulation there, as
the fourth (stereotyped) edition appeared in 1897. From this London reprint
a German translation was made by Fräulein Eugenie Jacobi, under the title
"Die Frauenfrage und der gesunde Menschenverstand" (Schupp: Neuwied and
Leipzig, 1895).