In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women’s History by Katharine Corbett; St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1999.
In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women’s History is a book that illuminates the way women transcended traditional expectations to create places for themselves in the emerging St. Louis community. Author Katharine Corbett’s book is a series of brief essays on St. Louis institutions, historical events and individuals that reveals the importance of women in St. Louis history.
Represented in the book are women of diverse racial and ethnic groups- writers and artists, reformers and clubwomen, factory workers and elite ladies, nurses and nuns-all involved in pushing the boundaries of women and their place in the public arena.
Some of the women included in the biographical essays are: Harriet Scott, Kate Chopin, Marie Chouteau, Jessie Benton Fremont, Anne Lucas Hunt, Harriet Hosmer, Anne Turnbo Malone and Sara Teasdale.
Corbett covers many time periods, historical events, and local institutions in her book. An overview of the women’s suffrage movement in St. Louis is very informative, and is followed by an essay on local suffrage pioneer Virginia Minor. The three page essay on Minor is informative and includes a lengthy passage regarding her attempt to register to vote in 1872, and the legal cases that followed.
The essays, which are accompanied by references to additional resources, give readers a new understanding of women’s wide-ranging presence in history and a new appreciation of their contributions to the development of St. Louis.
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March 14, 2017
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Last updated: March 14, 2017