The People??Joan of Arc ― Mary Elizabeth Lease, Gendered Politics and Populist Party Politics in Gilded-age America

This biography recounts the life and career of Mary Elizabeth Lease (1853-1933), the radical leader of the Populist Party who participated in the women's suffrage and feminist movements and told Midwestern farmers to “raise less corn and more hell,” launching a revolt against the agricultural depression in the nineteenth century. It emphasizes her Populist Party speeches, and does not go into detail about her non-Populist activities before and after the 1890s agrarian revolt. It considers how gender conventions, class, and ethnic identity impacted Gilded Age politics in the US, particularly women's restricted access to public political arenas. It begins with her childhood, teaching, advocacy for women's rights, and law career, then focuses on the radical agrarian politics in the late 1880s and early 1890s and her participation in the Populist Party, her speeches, public and media criticism of her (often in terms of her physical appearance and personal life), her involvement in the women's rights movement, her senatorial campaign, the publication of her book The Problem of Civilization Solved, her role in the the gold vs. silver debate in monetary policy, her move to the Progressive movement, and her legacy. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Brooke Speer Orr is Associate Professor of U.S. History at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. She won the Edgar Langsdorf Award for Excellence in Writing for her article on Mary Elizabeth Lease published in the prestigious Kansas History journal.