THE STATUTES OF NEW ZEALAND: Passed in the Fifty Seventh Year of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria and the fourth session of the eleventh parliament of New Zealand, begun and holden at Wellington on the Twenty-second Day of June, One thousand eight hundred and ninety-three. His

FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. viii, 539, [1] blank; light foxing to title and a few minor spots in places, but otherwise clean throughout;

in contemporary cloth, spine lettered in gilt, expertly recased, spine and boards rather sunned, back board creased along centre; with the contemporary ownership stamps of 'Hampden Borough Council' at head of title and front free endpaper; a very good copy of this important document.

In spite of it's dour title and rather dry subject matter this is a significant work, indeed a landmark publication in the history of 'votes for women': The Statutes of New Zealand, fourth session of the eleventh parliament, 1893, contains the first printed acknowledgement of a woman's right to vote.

On 19 September 1893 the governor, Lord Glasgow, signed a new Electoral Act into law. This is found in the present work as Act 18, 'An Act to amend and consolidate the Law relating to the qualification and registration of electors, and the conduct of elections of members of the house of representatives' (p. 35) in which it is noted that where the context of "person" is stated this 'includes woman' (p. 37). As a result of this landmark legislation, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

'The suffrage campaign in New Zealand began as a far-flung branch of a broad late-19th-century movement for women's rights that spread through Britain and its colonies, the United States and northern Europe. This movement was shaped by two main themes: equal political rights for women and a determination to use them for the moral reform of society (through, for example, the prohibition of alcohol).

New Zealand's pioneering suffragists were inspired both by the equal-rights arguments of philosopher John Stuart Mill and British feminists and by the missionary efforts of the American-based Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). A number of New Zealand's leading male politicians, including John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius Vogel, William Fox and John Balance, supported women's suffrage. In 1878, 1879 and 1887 bills or amendments extending the vote to women (or at least female ratepayers) only narrowly failed to pass in Parliament.

Outside Parliament the movement gathered momentum from the mid-1880s, especially following the establishment of a New Zealand WCTU in 1885. Skilfully led by Kate Sheppard, WCTU campaigners organised a series of huge petitions to Parliament: in 1891 over 9000 signatures were gathered, in 1892 almost 20,000, and finally in 1893 nearly 32,000 were obtained – representing almost a quarter of the adult European female population in New Zealand' (see http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/brief-history).

In most other democracies - notably Britain and the United States - women did not win the right to the vote until after the First World War. Not listed separately on OCLC, but found amongst various sets of the Statutes recorded.