SUFFRAGE - ELSA GYE Autograph letter signed ('Elsa') to her friend Lettie ('Dear Lettie'), mentioning she has Lady Constance Lytton's book ('...She describes me as 'young and fresh looking'! I feel very bucked...') and asking how Sydney liked Philip Snowden ('...I was sorry to see the WSPU interrupted him. I do not agree with interrupting Labour men - it's a different thing altogether to upset Cabinet Ministers, I've done it often myself - but the Woman's Question is so bound up with Labour...'), with family news, including the confinement of her sister in law ('...The place was like a slaughterhouse...'), 8 pages, dust-staining and marks, 8vo, Hampstead Garden Suburb, 12 April [19]14; with a further group to Lettie from Elsa, the first two written on lined school paper, featuring pen and ink caricatures of the Houses of Parliament run by women ('No men allowed by order of the Prime Minitress [sic]'), Britannia ('Women never never never will be slaves'), and a woman chasing a man from parliament ('quit my sight, miserable worm'), the others going on talking of family news and mutual friends, marriages, births and much else, c.50 pages, 8vo, Croydon, Fulham, Hastings, April 1898 to July 1907; with two portrait photographs of Elsa Gye, one signed and dated 1897 on the reverse, the other with her husband and child; and other correspondence (collection) Footnotes: 'IT'S A DIFFERENT THING ALTOGETHER TO UPSET CABINET MINISTERS, I'VE DONE IT OFTEN MYSELF'. Elsa Gye (1881-1943) was educated at Croydon High School and Guildhall School of Music, and intended to follow a musical career but in March 1907 she was converted to the suffrage cause and joined the WSPU. She travelled the country, campaigned with Mary Gawthorpe, Annie Kenney and Gladice Keevil, amongst others, and was arrested following the 'raid' on the House of Commons in February 1909 whilst assisting Constance Lytton. As our letter attests, Elsa Gye was indeed mentioned by Lytton in Prison and Prisoners, of which she is clearly proud. There are several letters written to her friend Lettie as a schoolgirl and, amongst the girlish chit chat (and a crush on her teacher 'the angelicest [sic] of angels'), there is a glimpse of the woman to come, revealing an emerging interest in women's rights, and her letters are seamed with a keen sense of humour ('...I actually slept with a piece of your cake... under my pillow - to dream of my future husband - but I only dreamt of bathroom slippers...'). In 1911 she married Will Bullock (who took her name), organised the celebratory dinner for universal woman suffrage in 1928, and became secretary of the Suffragette Fellowship. According to Elizabeth Crawford, although she set up the Record Room of the Suffragette Fellowship to preserve the records of the movement, she did not include a photograph of herself, '...the result that no image of her can be traced...' (Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928, 2001, p.254) - that is until now. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing