Shady Ladies: Nineteen Surprising and Rebellious American Women

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		Shady Ladies: Nineteen Surprising and Rebellious American Women
		Shady Ladies: Nineteen Surprising and Rebellious American Women

基本信息·出版社：Forge Books
·页码：256 页
·出版日期：2006年08月
·ISBN：0765308274
·International Standard Book Number：0765308274
·条形码：9780765308276
·EAN：9780765308276
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语

内容简介 Suzann Ledbetter has researched and written about American history for almost twenty years. The depth of her work is reflected in these well-crafted and enormously entertaining biographies of little-known---till now---Shady Ladies. Some were crackpots, some criminals, some charlatans, some genuine talents, but almost all have been sadly forgotten.
Unsung though they may be, these defiant women challenged post-Victorian society in an era when females were second-class citizens. They are every bit as intriguing as their more famous sisters. Who knew Harriet Hubbard Ayer and her cosmetic concoctions predated Helena Rubenstein, and that Ayer virtually invented the newspaper advertorial?
Photographs of Lydia Pinkham were the first photos ever used in advertising. A century after her death, modern science has confirmed that her black cohosh--laced elixir is a viable treatment for menopausal symptoms.
“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” was coined by Fanny Fern, aka Sara Parton, who, unlike the better-known Nellie Bly, became the highest-paid newspaper columnist in the country. And Laura Fair was as dangerous to men as Calamity Jane ever was . . . and faced up to the Supreme Court no less.
Shady Ladies is the story of early American rebels and a fascinating view of the lives of seventeen notorious and notable women. Suzann Ledbetter chronicles the exploits of feminist pioneers, bringing them to life with humor, empathy, and meticulous research.


作者简介 Suzann Ledbetter has been a writer since she was ten years old. Born in Joplin, she has lived in Missouri her whole life. The author of nearly two dozen books, Ledbetter writes both historical and contemporary fiction, nonfiction, humor, and biographies. She was inducted into the Missouri-based Writers Hall of Fame of America in 1997 and received the Spur Award for her biography Nellie Cashman: Prospector and Trailblazer.

专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

Biographer and novelist Ledbetter (A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves) illuminates the lives of 17 19th- and early 20th-century women who bucked a system that relegated them to the home to meet the needs of their husbands and children. Some are well known, like the "unsinkable" Margaret (Molly) Brown, survivor of the Titanic, who rose from a poor Irish background to become the toast of Denver society; a liberal, she espoused a separate justice system for juveniles and an international fair that others tried to shut down for featuring Chinese and Native Americans. Other subjects have been buried by time, and Ledbetter fills a gap in feminist history with her short descriptive bios. Henrietta Green, "the Witch of Wall Street," parlayed an inheritance into an estate valued at over $100 million dollars, but was noted for her miserliness. Sara Parton, with advanced ideas about women, left an abusive husband to become a successful columnist and novelist under the pen name Fanny Fern. Frances Benjamin Johnston was an early photojournalist whose work spanned a 50-year career. Although at times the author's colloquial language is clunky, these stories of independent-minded females are well worth recounting. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—This breezy romp through 19th-century American history touches upon the colorful lives and careers of women who are largely unfamiliar now. Most, however, were widely celebrated in their time, if not downright infamous. An artistically talented and sometimes delusional eccentric, wealthy Elizabeth Ney built her Xanadu in the wilds of Texas. Adah Isaacs Menken ("The Menken"), a gifted actress, cut a dash through the society of artists and poets while scandalizing and entertaining the public. Some wrested a remarkable life from poverty, like the legendary dance-hall denizen known as "Silver Heels" and the famously voluptuous Sarah Bowman, who rose from camp follower to proprietor of a "full service hotel" for soldiers during the war with Mexico. As for some better-remembered names, such as Ann Rutledge (Abraham Lincoln's mysterious lost love) and Margaret "Molly" Brown (of Leadville and Titanic fame), the author corrects misconceptions and provides details that make the women spring into focus for today's readers, while Lydia Pinkham, entrepreneur, and Fanny Fern, writer, are shown to be surprisingly modern figures. Filling out the collection are gritty pioneers of medicine, photography, law, finance, and other fields and walks of life. Adding a little spice to history and biography, this book takes its place alongside Barbara Holland's They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways and Renegades (Pantheon, 2001) and Sara Lorimer's Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas (Chronicle, 2002), though it isn't in the same league with Milbry Polk and Mary Tiegreen's outstanding Women of Discovery: A Celebration of Intrepid Women Who Explored the World (Clarkson Potter, 2001).—Christine C. Menefee, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
目录
IntroductionAcknowldegments1. Bethenia Owens-Adair2. Harriet Hubbard Ayer3. Martha Munger Black4. Sarah Knight Borginnis Bowman5. Margaret (Molly) Brown6. Nellie Cashman7. Laura Fair8. Henrietta Green9. Elsa Jane Guerin10. Frances Benjamin Johnston11. Adah Isaacs Menken12. Wilma Minor, Clara DeBoyer, Ann Rutledge13. Elisabet Ney14. Sarah Parton (Fanny Fern)15. Lydia Pinkham16. Mattie Silks17. Silver HeelsBibliography
……
文摘 Chapter One

Bethenia Owens-Adair

You will change your mind when I come back a physician,
and charge you more than I ever have for your hats and bonnets.

The phrase mad as a hatter derived from the addlepating (often fatal) side effects of the nitrate of mercury haberdashers once employed to shape and stiffen felt. In 1870, Bethenia Owens’s family questioned her sanity when she announced her intention to shutter her successful millinery shop and study medicine.

As word of Bethenia’s lunatic ambition spread through Roseburg, Oregon, a respected female friend confided that she’d never “submit” to a woman doctor. If the woman explained why she preferred a male doctor, the reasoning was never elucidated. It surely stemmed from gender bias rather than common sense, as less than a fourth of frontier doctors in those days actually held degrees from accredited colleges. The rest either apprenticed themselves to formally, or equally unformally, trained physicians, were self-taught by means their patients were probably better off remaining ignorant of, or simply tacked doctor on a shingle in front of their Christian names and slapped it upside their office door.

Bethenia was wounded by the criticism and dearth of support, but had already overcome enough hardships in her then thirty years to feel she’d earned the right to pursue a career in the healing arts. Ironically, her father might have contributed the inspirational impetus and necessary stubborn streak.

“Thomas Owens is not afraid of man or the devil,” Bethenia once said of the former Pike County, Kentucky, sheriff, who’d arrived in Oregon Territory in 1843 with a wife and two children and naught but fifty cents in his pocket. Less than a decade of farming the fertile Clatsop plain at the mouth of the Columbia River parlayed Owens’s four-bit nest egg into a princely net worth of twenty thousand do
……

查看更多 下一篇