Bookwomen

Jacalyn Eddy

Print version published by University of Wisconsin Press
Digital version published by Parallel Press and UWDC

“[These women were] not only superstars in a newly competitive field but also net-workers determined to carry out a mission requiring intense collaboration. The costs and payoffs of these women’s work–both for them and for us–make dynamic reading.”–Betsy Hearne, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

The most comprehensive account of the women who, as librarians, editors, and founders of the Horn Book, shaped the modern children’s book industry between 1919 and 1939. The lives of Anne Carroll Moore, Alice Jordan, Louise Seaman Bechtel, May Massee, Bertha Mahony Miller, and Elinor Whitney Field open up for readers the world of female professionalization. What emerges is a vivid illustration of some of the cultural debates of the time, including concerns about “good reading” for children and about women’s negotiations between domesticity and participation in the paid labor force and the costs and payoffs of professional life.

Jacalyn Eddy is lecturer in humanities at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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