{{Short description|English author}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}} {{Use British English|date=August 2019}} '''Emily Spender''' (1841–1922) was an English novelist and suffragist.
==Biography== Spender was born in 1841 in Bath, England.<ref name="At the Circulating Library">{{cite web |title=Author Information: Emily Spender |url=https://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_author.php?aid=1034 |website=At the Circulating Library |accessdate=9 June 2019}}</ref> She was cousin of the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson and sister-in law of radical publisher William Saunders, who placed her brother Edward Spender into a position as editor of the Western Morning News.<ref name="Crawford">{{cite book |last1=Crawford |first1=Elizabeth |title=The women's suffrage movement: a reference guide, 1866-1928 |date=2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=1135434026 |page=649 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a2EK9P7-ZMsC&q=SPENDER%2C+EMILY}}</ref> She was the great-aunt of Stephen Spender, the British poet.<ref name="E.M. Forster">{{cite web |title=E.M. Forster |url=http://www.thesuffragettes.org/map/outer-london-boroughs/hounslow/em-forster/ |website=The Suffragettes |date=22 February 2011 |accessdate=10 June 2019}}</ref>
Spender published her first two novels anonymously, first a conventional novel ''Son and Heir'' (1870), and then the feminist novel ''Restored'' (Hurst & Blackett, 1871), which was dedicated to Lilias Sophia Hallett the leader of the Bristol society for women's suffrage.<ref name="Crawford"/> Spencer went on to write more novels including ''Kingsford: A Novel'' (1866), ''True Marriage'' (1878), ''Until the Day Breaks'' (1886), and ''A Soldier for a Day: A Story of the Italian War of Independence'' (1901).<ref name="At the Circulating Library"/>
In 1871 she was the honorary secretary of the Bath committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage (NSWS). She was also part of the executive committee of the Central committee of the NSWS.<ref name="Crawford"/>
Spender died in 1922.<ref name="At the Circulating Library"/>
==References== {{reflist}} {{Authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Spender, Emily}} Category:1866 births Category:1928 deaths Category:English suffragists