Elizabeth Fisher Read

Elizabeth Fisher Read (1872 – December 13, 1943) was an attorney, scholar, and activist working for women's suffrage and world peace. She was a close friend and political mentor of Eleanor Roosevelt and also served as Roosevelt's attorney and financial advisor.

Early life Elizabeth Fisher Read was born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, in 1872, the daughter of George Willis Read and Henrietta A. Miner Read. Her younger sister was editor Georgia Willis Read.

She graduated from Smith College and University of Pennsylvania Law School. Columbia did not start regularly admitting female graduate students until 1900, when Read was nearly thirty. The subject of her degree is not known; however, popular subjects of study for Columbia women included psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. Given Read's interests in reform and international relations, it is possible she pursued her graduate work in one of these subjects.

Career In the 1910s, Read was a Women's Suffrage activist and represented the ideology of the New Woman, financially independent, politically active, and socially emancipated. She was active in social and political causes and was an influential figure in the League of Women Voters in New York City.

Read was a practicing lawyer and had a particular interest in international law. Beginning in about 1923 and continuing until her death twenty years later, she served as director of research for the American Foundation, a group advocating for international cooperation. translated and edited a book on the World Court, and helped Lape edit a book on expert medical testimony.

Personal life

Read lived with Esther Lape, educator and publicist, in Greenwich Village, at 20 East 11th Street. Despite a plaque noting that Eleanor Roosevelt lived there when she was first lady, the building was actually owned by Lape; Roosevelt rented an apartment for a time. Nearby, at 171 West 12th Street, lived other lesbian couples involved in the Woman's Suffrage movement and of the close-knit circle of friends of Roosevelt: Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, Molly Dewson and Polly Porter, and Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester.

Elizabeth Fisher Read died in New York on December 13, 1943.