Jennifer Reeder, Sharalyn D. Howcroft, Elizabeth A. Kuehn, and Jessica M. Nelson are historians for the Church History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“[I] felt like shouting hallelujah,” exclaimed one woman after hearing Eliza R. Snow speak in 1883. During the mid- to late 1800s, Snow was a key figure in expanding women’s participation and leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was a writer, organizer, temple worker, and advocate for women. She was also an accomplished public speaker, giving nearly thirteen hundred recorded discourses between 1840 and her death in 1887. Of those discourses, fifty-two of the most powerful and timeless have been selected and carefully annotated for this book.

As the secretary of the Nauvoo Relief Society in the 1840s, Snow kept meticulous minutes of the organization’s foundational meetings, including Joseph Smith’s instructions to women, empowering them to help build God’s kingdom. Later, under the direction of Brigham Young in Utah Territory, Snow assisted bishops in organizing ward Relief Societies; she also instructed the women who belonged to those societies, encouraging them to “rise up and speak”—to overcome fears in public speaking and to minister to each other and to their communities.

Beyond her work in Relief Societies, Snow also helped create the church’s associations for young women and children and participated in the development of those organizations at the ward, stake, and general levels. John Taylor appointed her as the general president of the Relief Society in 1880, a position in which she served until her death.

Snow’s discourses include religious instruction, urging women to awaken to their divine potential. She also encouraged them to engage in home manufacture, become politically involved and vote, enroll in medical courses, and subscribe to and write for the Woman’s Exponent, an independent Latter-day Saint women’s newspaper of the time.

Eliza R. Snow called upon all Latter-day Saints to become “coworkers” with Christ as “joint heirs” with Him and “saviors on Mount Zion”—a call that remains relevant today. Her words can enlarge current work in ministering, speaking, and teaching.

This book further demonstrates the commitment of the Church Historian’s Press to publishing
women’s history and may be seen as a companion to earlier publications from the press such as The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women, and Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024.