Laura Curtis Bullard

Laura Curtis Bullard (1831–1912) was an American writer and women's rights activist. She founded a newspaper called The Ladies' Visitor, and Drawing Room Companion and published two novels with women's rights themes, the best known of which is Christine: or, Woman's Trials and Triumphs. She was elected as a corresponding secretary for the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, at its founding meeting. She succeeded Stanton as editor of The Revolution, a women's rights newspaper founded by Stanton and Anthony.

Laura Jane Curtis was born in Freedom, Maine, on Nov. 21, 1831, the oldest of five children of Lucy Winslow Curtis and Jeremiah Curtis. Her father was an abolitionist who became wealthy by establishing a company in Bangor, Maine, where the family moved, that produced Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a morphine-based tonic. In 1859 Laura married Enoch Bullard, an executive in her family's business who later became its president.

Bullard published two novels about women who determined the course of their own lives without depending on men. In 1854, when she was 23 years old, Bullard anonymously published Now-a-days!, in which the novel's heroine, who comes from a wealthy family, rejects a marriage proposal and moves to a remote part of Maine to earn her living as a teacher. In 1856 Bullard published under her own name Christine: or, Woman's Trials and Triumphs, in which the heroine rejects a disreputable suitor, becomes a woman's rights lecturer, opens a home for impoverished working women and adopts a daughter. Bullard also founded and edited a newspaper in New York City called The Ladies' Visitor, and Drawing Room Companion, which she published monthly from 1855 until she became pregnant in1861.

Bullard was one of the earliest members of Sorosis, a women's professional and literary society that was founded in 1868. She became a corresponding secretary for the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, at its founding meeting in 1869. She wrote articles for The Revolution, the weekly women's rights newspaper founded by Stanton and Anthony in 1868. In 1870 she co-founded the Brooklyn Women's Club along with her friend Elizabeth Tilton, poetry editor of The Revolution and wife of Theodore Tilton, editor of the liberal New York Independent.

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