The collection comprises photographic portraits collected by Helen Blackburn for her book 'Women's Suffrage: A record of the Women's Suffrage Movement in the British Isles, with biographical sketches of Miss Becker'. These are portraits of notable women and men who were involved with or supported women's rights and suffrage, primarily of the Victorian era and therefore Helen Blackburn's contemporaries. Many of the photographs in the collection appear in the book.
They comprise chiefly b/w or sepia studio portraits. There are also some newspaper clippings, some recent copy prints and some transparencies made in 1991. All measurements are given in height, then width.
There are four portrait photographs in the book that do not appear in this collection: Anna Jameson (page 45); Barbara Bodichon (page 47); Bessie Rayner Parkes (page 49); and Lady Anna Gore Langton (page 114). There are also several portraits that are in this collection that do not appear in the book.