Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children’s Book Publishing, 1919–1939

Notes

Abbreviations ACMP Anne Carroll Moore Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library AMJC Alice M. Jordan Collection (one box), Special Collections, Boston Public Library HBR Horn Book Records, MS 78, College Archives, Simmons College, Boston LBP Louise Seaman Bechtel Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries LBUA Louise Seaman Bechtel, unpublished autobiography, box 3, Manuscript Collections, Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, Department of Special Collections, University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries NERTCL New England Round Table of Children’s Librarians (one box), Special Collections , Boston Public Library Introduction 1. Periodicals ran articles with such urgent titles as “Equality of Woman with Man: A Myth”; “Career or Maternity: The Dilemma of a College Girl”; “Spinster Factories: Why I Would Not Send a Daughter to College.”But personal testimonies of women who had made the “proper” choice also ran: “I Gave Up My Law Books for a Cook Book”; “I Quit My Job”; “You May Have My Job: A Feminist Discovers Her Home.” 2. See, for example, Jessie Bernard’s study, Academic Women; William O’Neill, Everyone Was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America; William Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920–1970; Mary Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present; Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism; Barbara Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women’s Higher Education in America; Dee Garrison, Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society; Penina 169 notes Migdal Glazer and Miriam Slater, Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Woman into the Professions, 1890–1940; Joyce Antler, “The Educated Woman and Professionalization: The Struggle for a New Feminine Identity, 1890–1920.” 3. Hearne and Jenkins, “Sacred Texts,” 536–47. Hearne and Jenkins include Moore and Miller in their article and identify a canon that includes texts by three bookwomen in this study: My Roads to Childhood: Views and Reviews of Children’s Books by Anne Carroll Moore and Realms of Gold compiled by Bertha Mahony and Elinor Whitney. 4. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935, xii. 5. Bush, “New England Women,” 719–35. 6. R. Smith, “Just Who Are These Women?” 161–70. 7. Vandergrift,“Female Advocacy and Harmonious Voices,”718; Hannigan,“A Feminist Analysis,” 851–74. 8. James Daugherty to Bertha Mahony Miller, May 18, 1946, box 5, folder 1, HBR. Daugherty suggested that “a more analytical note might be sounded occasionally, without spoiling the atmosphere of rosy enthusiasm appropriate to this particular field. . . . I wonder if we haven’t come to the point when [literary criticism] can be given more serious attention.” 9. [Bertha Everett Mahony], “New Books,” Horn Book 2 (November 1925): 11. 10. J. Brown, Definition of a Profession, 13–14, 33. 11. Hearne and Jenkins, “Sacred Texts,” 537. 12. MacLeod, American Childhood, 179. 13. Children’s books during these years have been frequently criticized. In Thursday’s Child, Sheila A. Egoff, for example, argues that “any examination of children’s books of this period will show barely one-tenth of one percent to be of any enduring value” (9). 14. The editor was Laura Harris at Grossett and Dunlap. 15. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life, 46, 72. Heilbrun argues that women “have been seen to support one another in the crises of their lives, particularly in those family crises so central to a woman’s experience of marriage, birth, death, illness, isolation,” but friendship and “colleagueship” among women have seldom been recounted (98). Chapter 1. Troublesome Womanhood and New Childhood 1. Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism, 70. 2. Pawley, Reading on the Middle Border, 7. In Free to All, Abigail Van Slyck notes that Carnegie’s gifts complicated the library’s role by creating decision-making dynamics that embraced both philanthropy and paternalism (79). 3. Carson, “Children’s Share,” 254. 4. Winston Churchill, “The Mission of the Public Library,” Library Journal 28 (March 1903): 115–16. 5. Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, 7. 6. Ditzion, Arsenals of Democratic Culture, 6. 7. Van Slyck, Free to All, 220. 8. Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism, 56. 9. Ibid., 57, 79. 10. See Wiegand, “Structure of Librarianship,” 18–21. 11. For a discussion of Dewey, see Wiegand, Irrepressible Reformer. 170 notes to pages 7–17 12. Wiegand, “Structure of Librarianship,” 31. 13. The term “separate spheres” cannot be used uncritically, and its meaning...