Skip to main contentBiographyArtist, advocate, and author, Eliza B. Duffey is remembered by historians today for her work advocating women’s education and rights within marriage. For several years after the Civil War, however, Duffey also had a successful career as a painter of still life scenes, showing her work repeatedly at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and eventually earning status as an
Associate Academician with that organization. While little is known of her early life, her career as both an artist and an activist reveal a remarkable 19th century woman.
Accounts state that by the age of 15, Duffey was employed as an apprentice at a local newspaper in Columbus, Ohio, and it is probably there that she met her husband, the author and painter John Duffey. By the 1860s, the couple were living in Philadelphia, both contributing articles to popular magazines such as Godey’s Ladies Book and Arthur’s Home Magazine, and it was here that Duffey’s career as an artist flourished. She began showing her work in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, appearing in nearly all of their annual exhibitions throughout the mid to late 1860s, and selling paintings nationally.
In the 1870s, the Duffey’s moved to Vineland, New Jersey where they both renewed their efforts in journalism. Eliza Duffey began editing the local paper, and both she and her husband ran the local library. Described in a 1920s history of Vineland as being “of a quiet disposition with little time for social duties,” Duffey completed several books that strenuously argued for women’s rights at this time. In What Women Should Know, published in 1873, Duffey argued that married women should not be the property of their husbands, and should have the right of bodily autonomy within their relationships. Most famously, Duffey also wrote No Sex in Education: An Equal Chance for Girls and Boys, in which she vociferously argues against the popular theory that women who undertook higher education would become “physiological disasters” and would suffer “nervous collapse and sterility.” Duffey stridently opposed this in both her writing—arguing that good educations for both women and men were the key to both a healthy lifestyle and a strong, national foundation—and in the example of her life.
Duffey left Vineland, for Troy, NY in her later years, yet still worked in the newspaper industry until her death in 1898.
Eliza B. Duffey
1838 - 1898
Associate Academician with that organization. While little is known of her early life, her career as both an artist and an activist reveal a remarkable 19th century woman.
Accounts state that by the age of 15, Duffey was employed as an apprentice at a local newspaper in Columbus, Ohio, and it is probably there that she met her husband, the author and painter John Duffey. By the 1860s, the couple were living in Philadelphia, both contributing articles to popular magazines such as Godey’s Ladies Book and Arthur’s Home Magazine, and it was here that Duffey’s career as an artist flourished. She began showing her work in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, appearing in nearly all of their annual exhibitions throughout the mid to late 1860s, and selling paintings nationally.
In the 1870s, the Duffey’s moved to Vineland, New Jersey where they both renewed their efforts in journalism. Eliza Duffey began editing the local paper, and both she and her husband ran the local library. Described in a 1920s history of Vineland as being “of a quiet disposition with little time for social duties,” Duffey completed several books that strenuously argued for women’s rights at this time. In What Women Should Know, published in 1873, Duffey argued that married women should not be the property of their husbands, and should have the right of bodily autonomy within their relationships. Most famously, Duffey also wrote No Sex in Education: An Equal Chance for Girls and Boys, in which she vociferously argues against the popular theory that women who undertook higher education would become “physiological disasters” and would suffer “nervous collapse and sterility.” Duffey stridently opposed this in both her writing—arguing that good educations for both women and men were the key to both a healthy lifestyle and a strong, national foundation—and in the example of her life.
Duffey left Vineland, for Troy, NY in her later years, yet still worked in the newspaper industry until her death in 1898.
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