Elisabeth Israels Perry & Jennifer Ann Price: Persuade publisher to issue a 19th century fictional memoir by a woman
Olive San Louie Anderson, a doctor's daughter from Ohio, entered the University of Michigan in 1871, one year after the Ann Arbor campus first admitted women. She was one of a tiny handful in a sea of men. When she graduated in 1875, she hoped to enter a profession, but she was thwarted — not only because of sexism but also because of her religious skepticism.
In 1878 Anderson published a fictionalized memoir titled An American Girl, and Her Four Years in a Boys' College. The book has been cited by a social historian or two, but it was essentially forgotten. A few years ago, however, two scholars at Saint Louis University came across it and were charmed by its spirit. They persuaded the University of Michigan Press to publish an extensively annotated new edition, which will appear in December.
The novel is not a great work of art, but it is "an extremely engaging fictional illustration of an emerging type of American woman in the 1870s," says Elisabeth Israels Perry, a professor of history at Saint Louis, who edited the new edition with Jennifer Ann Price, a Ph.D. candidate in American studies there.
An American Girl tells the story of Wilhelmine Elliot, a student at "the University of Ortonville" known on the campus as Will. Will makes friends and loves her scholarly work. But she also suffers condescension and obnoxious advances from male tutors and students, one of whom she rebuffs by pulling a "little pearl-handled revolver" from her pocket: "I'll give you until I count three to get from here to the corner!"
She also resists her peers' efforts to drag her to church. When a roommate suggests that Will's sister's terminal illness is part of God's plan "to draw you nearer to the Saviour," she explodes: "If that is the way your God treats those he loves, I don't want to know him. Pretty way to fill up heaven, by making earth so lonely and cold and wretched that we don't want to stay!"
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
In 1878 Anderson published a fictionalized memoir titled An American Girl, and Her Four Years in a Boys' College. The book has been cited by a social historian or two, but it was essentially forgotten. A few years ago, however, two scholars at Saint Louis University came across it and were charmed by its spirit. They persuaded the University of Michigan Press to publish an extensively annotated new edition, which will appear in December.
The novel is not a great work of art, but it is "an extremely engaging fictional illustration of an emerging type of American woman in the 1870s," says Elisabeth Israels Perry, a professor of history at Saint Louis, who edited the new edition with Jennifer Ann Price, a Ph.D. candidate in American studies there.
An American Girl tells the story of Wilhelmine Elliot, a student at "the University of Ortonville" known on the campus as Will. Will makes friends and loves her scholarly work. But she also suffers condescension and obnoxious advances from male tutors and students, one of whom she rebuffs by pulling a "little pearl-handled revolver" from her pocket: "I'll give you until I count three to get from here to the corner!"
She also resists her peers' efforts to drag her to church. When a roommate suggests that Will's sister's terminal illness is part of God's plan "to draw you nearer to the Saviour," she explodes: "If that is the way your God treats those he loves, I don't want to know him. Pretty way to fill up heaven, by making earth so lonely and cold and wretched that we don't want to stay!"