"Reading Their Way into History: How Books Inspired the Progressive Generation of Women"

The generation of women born in America’s first Gilded Age left an extraordinary record of public achievement—as physicians and scientists, educators and social workers, and perhaps most of all as leaders of efforts to attain social justice in the early years of the 20th century. Inspired by their reading (not only what they read but how and with whom), women as different as Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Hamilton, M. Carey Thomas, and Ida B. Wells often lost—and found—themselves in books and worked out a life purpose around them. With Little Women’s Jo March often serving as a youthful model of independence, girls and young women created communities of learning, imagination, and emotional connection around literary activities that helped them entertain and later attain public identities. 

Cosponsored by the History of the Book Seminar at the Harvard Humanities Center and by the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library and Academic Engagement Programs, this lecture will be presented as part of the series of events of academic years 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 culminating in the “Why Books?” conference in October. Professor Sicherman will discuss her book Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women.