The Temperance Collection encompasses a broad social movement in which American women played a prominent role from the early decades of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century. They participated in a variety of organizational settings on the local, state, national and international level. While the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is generally regarded to be the leading temperance organization from its beginnings in 1873, other local and national groups were active at different points in the Prohibition movement. That diversity is evident in this collection.

While the bulk of the material comes from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Temperance Collection also contains material from as early as 1835. There is also a significant amount of material from the post-Volstead Act (the Eighteenth Amendment) period, reflecting the fight to ward off the immediate challenges to national prohibition once it became law in 1920. This struggle, much like the earlier temperance crusade, was carried out and led by women.

Numerous secondary works address the American temperance movement and the critical role played by women in that movement. See, for example, Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Rutgers University Press, 1990) and Janet Zollinger Giele, Two Paths to Women's Equality: Temperance, Suffrage, and the Origins of Modern Feminism (Twayne, 1995).