Description
A true story of love, loss, and the pioneering fight for women’s education in America.
Catharine (Kate) Beecher was a crusader for women’s education, bestselling author, and unique feminist thinker in the nineteenth century. Yet many today have never even heard of her. Kate’s fame was eclipsed by that of her younger sister, abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Women’s Crusader reveals the untold tale of romance and grief that launched Kate on a new path as an advocate for American women. Biographer R. Lee Wilson combed through unpublished letters, manuscripts, and diary entries to discover the secrets of Kate and Alexander Fisher, an unlikely couple. Kate was a fun-loving extrovert, while Alexander was an introverted math prodigy and brilliant Yale professor. But they were brought together by a piece of her published poetry and their joint love for music. After a tragic shipwreck tore them apart, Kate’s life dramatically shifted focus. She waged a battle against misogyny to help provide women with the education they deserved. Compelling and meticulously researched, Women’s Crusader is the inspiring turning-point story of an important yet little-known woman in US history.
M. Newman –
The romance was stormy and difficult; it is edifying to discover how Catharine teaches Alexander to both love and respect a woman in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when many women were obliged to profess gratitude for a man’s attention, no matter how vaguely expressed, especially if the woman was “getting on in years.” Wilson takes us deep into the mindset and customs of the early nineteenth century and shows us, through Catharine Beecher’s determination and individuality, the genesis of change for American women.