Militant suffragist Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence launched and co-edited the weekly journal Votes for Women with her husband, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, in 1907. The journal began as the official publication of the militant suffrage organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), but in 1912 the Pethick-Lawrences distanced themselves from the WSPU and began to publish it independently. During the first half of the twentieth century Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence published a number of suffragist pamphlets, many of them printed versions of speeches she had previously delivered. Speeches she gave in her own defence at the conspiracy trial of 1912 were published in 1913. From 1908 to 1950, she wrote many letters to the editor on a wide variety of national and international political topics. Her autobiography, 1938, largely focuses on the militant suffrage movement and the involvement in it of herself and her husband, as well as on her pacifist activities after World War One.