Synopses & Reviews
"Adds considerably to the historiography on American women, education, and politics."
-- Journal of the Early Republic "A wealth of detail about this lost world of educated women, which had a lasting impact on defining women's cultural authority in American society."
-- American Historical Review "A fresh interpretation of the place of education, reading, and voluntary association in American women's lives between the Revolution and the Civil War."
-- New England Quarterly "A landmark publication in American women's history. . . . Will guide scholarship on early America's free women and learning for years to come."
-- William and Mary Quarterly "A detailed analysis of the relationship between education and women's participation in civil society. . . .Best utilized in a course examining the historic relationship between women's education and women's participation in public life."
-- Feminist Teacher "Ambitious and fascinating. . . . Women's voices are vibrantly present."
Journal of American History "The book's greatest strength is its archival depth and breadth. . . . Presents an impressive number of examples drawn from the experiences of women across seven decades and at least a dozen states. . . . An important resource for all historians of gender, education or print culture in early republic and antebellum America."
Common-Place "Elegant. . . . Kelley has drawn from a vast array of sources, crossing regional and racial lines, to produce a meticulous argument. Her story explains rather that valorizes."
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society "This superb book persuasively and gracefully makes the case that education . . . was the decisive factor propelling women's entrance into the public sphere during the nineteenth century. . . . Deserves the widest possible readership."
The Historian "[An] innovative and meticulously researched book."
American Antiquarian Society Newsletter Ambitious and fascinating.
The Journal of American History This book fills an important gap in the historiography.
American Historical Review A pathbreaking interpretation of the new and expanding spaces for female education between the Revolution and the Civil War.
John Brooke, Ohio State University The volume adds considerably to the historiography on American women, education, and politics.
Journal of the Early Republic
Review
Ambitious and fascinating.
The Journal of American History
Review
"The book's greatest strength is its archival depth and breadth. . . . Presents an impressive number of examples drawn from the experiences of women across seven decades and at least a dozen states. . . . An important resource for all historians of gender, education or print culture in early republic and antebellum America."
Common-Place
Review
The volume adds considerably to the historiography on American women, education, and politics.
Journal of the Early Republic
Review
"This superb book persuasively and gracefully makes the case that education . . . was the decisive factor propelling women's entrance into the public sphere during the nineteenth century. . . . Deserves the widest possible readership."
The Historian
Review
A pathbreaking interpretation of the new and expanding spaces for female education between the Revolution and the Civil War.
John Brooke, Ohio State University
Review
This book fills an important gap in the historiography.
American Historical Review
Review
"A wealth of detail about this lost world of educated women, which had a lasting impact on defining women's cultural authority in American society."
-- American Historical Review
Review
"A fresh interpretation of the place of education, reading, and voluntary association in American women's lives between the Revolution and the Civil War."
-- New England Quarterly
Review
"A landmark publication in American women's history. . . . Will guide scholarship on early America's free women and learning for years to come."
-- William and Mary Quarterly
Review
"A detailed analysis of the relationship between education and women's participation in civil society. . . .Best utilized in a course examining the historic relationship between women's education and women's participation in public life."
-- Feminist Teacher
Review
"Ambitious and fascinating. . . . Women's voices are vibrantly present."
Journal of American History
Review
"Elegant. . . . Kelley has drawn from a vast array of sources, crossing regional and racial lines, to produce a meticulous argument. Her story explains rather that valorizes."
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
Review
"[An] innovative and meticulously researched book."
American Antiquarian Society Newsletter
Synopsis
Education was decisive in recasting women's subjectivity and the lived reality of their collective experience in post-Revolutionary and antebellum America. Asking how and why women shaped their lives anew through education, Mary Kelley measures the significant transformation in individual and social identities fostered by female academies and seminaries. Constituted in a curriculum that matched the course of study at male colleges, women's liberal learning, Kelley argues, played a key role in one of the most profound changes in gender relations in the nation's history: the movement of women into public life.
Synopsis
Education was decisive in recasting women's subjectivity and the felt reality of their collective experience in post-Revolutionary and antebellum America. Asking how and why women shaped their lives anew through education, Mary Kelley measures the significant transformation in individual and social identities fostered by female academies and seminaries. Constituted in a curriculum that matched the course of study at male colleges, women's liberal learning, Kelley argues, played a key role in one of the most profound changes in gender relations in the nation's history: the movement of women into public life.
By the 1850s, the large majority of women deeply engaged in public life as educators, writers, editors, and reformers had been schooled at female academies and seminaries. Although most women did not enter these professions, many participated in networks of readers, literary societies, or voluntary associations that became the basis for benevolent societies, reform movements, and activism in the antebellum period. Kelley's analysis demonstrates that female academies and seminaries taught women crucial writing, oration, and reasoning skills that prepared them to claim the rights and obligations of citizenship.
About the Author
Mary Kelley is Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture, and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is author, coauthor, or editor of six books, including Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America and The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women's Rights and Woman's Sphere (both from the University of North Carolina Press).