Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907) fought for women's rights throughout her adult life. In 1868, she helped found the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She met Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and allied herself with the more radical wing of the organization, the National Woman Suffrage Movement.

She soon became president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and lobbied for a federal suffrage amendment. Several of her speeches were printed as tracts. In 1873, she published a pioneering work: Womanhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities.

This collection of more than 1,700 items includes manuscripts of Hooker's writings as well as her diaries and correspondence. It also includes selected correspondence of about 100 other people, including Anthony, Stanton, Olympia Brown, and Matilda J. Gage.

Although the collection focuses on Hooker's role in the Woman Suffrage Movement, it also contains manuscript material relating to the Civil War, the water cure movement, Hartford, Connecticut's Nook Farm community, the Beecher-Tilton scandal, spiritualism, and other topics that provide insight into the attitudes and mores of nineteenth century America.