Remarkable Women You Have Not Heard Of
Margaret Bourke-White, who entered college in the 1920s with the idea of becoming a Herpetologist, could have made a name for herself handling snakes. Instead, she picked up a camera and went on to become a groundbreaking female photojournalist, giving us some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
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Little did Julia Ward Howe know that in writing what became the anthem of the American Civil War in 1861, she emancipated herself from the narrow, 19th-century views that kept women in domestic confinement, and realized her long-held ambition to become a thinker, a writer and an individual on her own terms.
An avid reader for as long as I can remember, I grew up absolutely devouring the works of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. But I never knew her by that name. To me, she was Carolyn Keene, author of all those wonderful Nancy Drew mysteries whose bright yellow spines lined my bedroom bookshelf. In a book publishing world long dominated by males, Adams became a stunning business success by offering young girls a strong, adventure-seeking literary heroine who controlled her own fate.
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Marguerite de Angeli, this Wednesday’s Woman, was born in a small town where “we’d had no library.” But in her later years, as the beloved best-selling author and illustrator of books that influenced the values of generations of children, she returned to that same town to read her books to children at the library named in her honor.
During her long publishing career, de Angeli excelled at depicting the traditions and cultural diversity of people often overlooked in children’s literature of the time — a Great Depression family, African-American children experiencing racism, Polish miners whose dreams took them beyond Pennsylvania’s coal mines, the disabled, 19th-century Quaker abolitionists, native Americans and immigrants.
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Happy Valentine’s Day! We’ve all been there. You stare at racks of valentines, reading and replacing card after card. This one’s too schmaltzy; that one’s not romantic enough. Just go with cute and funny? If you suffer valentine anxiety, blame today’s Wednesday’s Woman: Esther Howland, “Mother of the American Valentine.
Continue reading “Esther Howland: Business Women Who Turned Valentine Card Art Into a Fortune”
The life story of Edmonia Lewis, a Civil War-era mixed-race orphan who succeeded as an artist only after she expatriated herself to Italy, is a tale of personal triumph in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. And it’s one that makes for a poignant Wednesday’s Woman episode.
Continue reading “Edmonia Lewis: ‘The Land of Liberty Had No Room For a Colored Sculptor’”
