Hedwig Dohm, née Schlesinger (1831–1919), was the eleventh of eighteen children born to a Berlin manufacturer. She left school at age 15 and began training as a teacher at 18. In her early twenties, she married Ernst Dohm, editor-in-chief of Germany’s leading satirical journal, Kladderadatsch. From 1872 onward, Hedwig Dohm contributed many essays on behalf of the struggle for women’s rights; she also wrote comic plays. Her essay on women’s suffrage, “Women’s Right to Vote,” excerpted in this volume, appeared in the second part of a book entitled Women’s Nature and Rights [Der Frauen Natur und Recht], which was published in Berlin in 1876. Its cover is reproduced here.