Julia Ward Howe: Her Song is Marching On

Inspired by the human horror, anguish, and sense of national purpose she experienced during visits to Union Army encampments and  hospitals, Julia Ward Howe wrote what became one of the most powerful and famous songs of all time.

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.

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Harriet Stratemeyer Adams: Literary Mother of Nancy Drew

Harriet Adams with many of her Nancy Drew novels.
In the second decade of the 20th century, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams graduated from college, became an apprentice in her father’s book publishing company and went on to become an internationally acclaimed literary phenomenon.

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: A Pioneer of Multicultural Children’s Literature

Marguerite de Angeli and her books
As a turn-of-the-20th century resident of Collingswood, N.J., Marguerite de Angeli began her career as an illustrator and author who pioneered the concept of multicultural children’s books. A children’s reading room in the Collingswood Library is named in her honor.

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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Esther Howland: Business Women Who Turned Valentine Card Art Into a Fortune

Esther Howland and her cards
A gifted artist fascinated with the romantic notion of Valentine messages, Esther Howland was also a hardboiled business women who built a national Valentine card company that generated the equivalent of $2.6 million in sales annually.

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.

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Edmonia Lewis: ‘The Land of Liberty Had No Room For a Colored Sculptor’

African American Edmonia Lewis, fine art sculptor
Unable to follow her dream of being a fine art sculptor in the U.S., Edmonia Lewis moved to Italy and became the first mixed-race fine art sculptor to achieve international fame with her marble works. At left is her sculpture of Minnehaha, the husband of Hiawatha; at right her bust of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who led the Union Army’s celebrated 54th Regiment of African American soldiers.

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.

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Hedy Lamarr, Serious Inventor Trapped in a Hollywood Image

Hedy Lamarr, actress and one of America's most famed female inventors
In parallel with her Hollywood fame, Hedy Lamarr was a constant tinkerer and successful inventor who contributed significant innovative engineering ideas adopted by the U.S. military and consumer industries. In 1997 Lamarr’s engineering work was honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award and in 2014 she was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Whoever coined the phrase “more than just a pretty face” could have been describing this Wednesday’s Woman. Hedy Lamarr, the exquisite Hollywood beauty of the 1930s and ’40s, was born into an Austrian Jewish family as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914. She would ultimately go on to become the Hollywood star we all know, as well as a highly successful engineering innovator who most of us were never aware of.

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