Without knowing where the money was to be obtained for publishing the History but determined that it should be done, Miss Anthony pushed on the work. The steel engravings cost $126 apiece and where women were unable or unwilling to pay for their own, she herself assumed the responsibility. To Mrs. Nichols she wrote: "I shall have your picture and that of Ernestine L. Rose if it takes the last drop in the bucket."[4] Because of the unpopularity of the subject the large firms would not consider the publication of this work, which it was now found would fill two huge volumes, but arrangements were concluded finally with Fowler & Wells. In their great anxiety to get their work before the public while they yet lived to see it properly done, each chapter was hurried to the publishers the moment it was completed and immediately stereotyped and printed, which made revising, condensing and re-arranging impossible. The first volume was issued in May, 1881, a royal octavo of 900 pages, bringing the record down to the beginning of the Civil War. It is not an exaggeration to say that no history during the century had been more favorably received by the press. The New York dailies contained from one to two or more columns of most complimentary reviews. The National Citizen and Ballot-Box gave up almost an entire edition to notices of the History taken from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and other papers, with not a disparaging criticism. Most of them echoed the sentiment of the New York Sun: "We have long needed an authentic and exhaustive account of the movement for the enfranchisement of women;" and of the Chicago News: "The appearance of this book, long expected by the friends, is not only an important literary occurrence, but it is a remarkable event in the history of civilization." The personal commendations from such men as President Andrew D. White, of Cornell University, Hon. C. B. Waite, of Chicago, Rev. William Henry Channing, and from scores of eminent women, would in themselves require several chapters.