Making Women's History ─ The Essential Mary Ritter Beard

Mary Ritter Beard was the single most important advocate and practioner of women’s history…She virtually invented the field, said historian and professor Barbara Sicherman of this visionary and ground-breaking historian who devoted her life to reconstructing women’s past—a past that had remained largely unstudied, undocumented, and unacknowledged. Beard held a firm conviction that women had a far greater impact on history than male historians had ever recognized and she believed that a knowledge of their own history would enable women to realize their full potential as active members of society. With this essential—and accessible—selection from her writings and speeches, Ann J. Lane restores Beard to her well-deserved place at the core of early-twentieth-century feminist history and theory.

Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958) was co-author, with Charles Beard, of The Rise of American Civilization and author of many other books.

Ann J. Lane is professor of history and director of women’s studies at the University of Virginia and is author of To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.