Lillie Devereux Blake, pen name, Tiger Lily; (August 12, 1833 – December 30, 1913) was an American woman suffragist, reformer, and writer, born in Raleigh, North Carolina and educated in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1869, she became actively interested in the woman suffrage movement and devoted herself to pushing the reform, arranging conventions, getting up public meetings, writing articles, and occasionally making lecture tours.

A woman of strong affections and marked domestic tastes, she did not allow her public work to interfere with her home duties, and her speaking outside of New York City was almost wholly done in the summer, when her family was naturally scattered.

[1] In 1879, she was unanimously elected president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, an office that she held for eleven years.

During that period, she made a tour of the state every summer, arranged conventions, and each year conducted a legislative campaign, many times addressing committees of the senate and assembly.

As early as 1871, she spoke and wrote on the subject, and through her labors, in 1881 and 1882, bills were passed by the assembly, but failed to become laws, however, because of the opposition of the New York City Police Department.

The bills giving seats to saleswomen, ordering the presence of a woman physician in every insane asylum where women were detained, and many other beneficent measures were presented or aided by her.

She attended conventions and made speeches in most of the U.S. states and territories and she addressed committees of both houses of Congress as well as the legislatures of New York and Connecticut.

She was remembered as a graceful and logical writer, a witty and eloquent speaker and a charming hostess, her weekly receptions through the season in New York having been for many years among the attractions of literary and reform circles.

His widow and daughters removed to New Haven, where Mrs. Devereux was widely known for the generous hospitality that she dispensed from her home, "Maple Cottage".

[1] Blake studied at Miss Apthorp's School for Girls in New Haven before taking the Yale College course from tutors at home.

Although she abandoned this particular formulation of feminism, the difficulties of expressing her independence within the limited roles allowed by her social station would prove a continuing theme in her life.

[1] Writing for The Knickerbocker magazine in 1858 she had told a fictional story of a woman, Melissa, who murdered her tutor who did not return her love, by abandoning him in a cave without a lamp.

Researcher Joe Nickell writing for Skeptical Inquirer magazine in 2017 explains that this gives "Credulous believers in ghosts... confirmation of their superstitious beliefs" who tell of hearing Melissa weeping and calling out for her murdered tutor.

Melissa is pure fiction, but Blake did visit Mammoth Cave with her husband Frank Umsted, "traveling by train, steamer, and stagecoach".

A handsome fortune she had inherited was largely impaired, so the young widow began to work in real earnest, writing stories, sketches, and letters for several leading periodicals.

Her most famous novel Fettered for Life, or, Lord and Master: A Story of To-Day is an attempt to draw attention to the myriad of complex issues facing women.

Blake was also the chair of the National American Women's Suffrage Association's Committee on legislative Advice from 1895, when it was founded, until 1899, when it was effectively dissolved by Susan B.

[13] Blake completely broke ties with the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1900 when Susan B. Anthony, who was retiring as the leader of the organization, selected Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard to succeed her.

However, Anthony and her followers emphasized a unique nature of women in their separate sphere, and asserted that innate moral authority was the justification for their right to suffrage.

She earned a reputation as a freethinker and gained fame when she attacked the well-known lectures of Morgan Dix, a clergyman who asserted that woman's inferiority was supported by the Bible.