biography
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1876–1958)
|
| biography:
| Historian and social reformer, born in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. The wife of Charles Beard, she met him while both were students at DePauw University (Asbury, IN) and they married in 1900. She followed him to Oxford University, England, where she became involved in both women's suffrage and working-class education activities. On their return to the USA (1902), she began postgraduate study at Columbia University, but dropped out (1904) and thereafter became a self-directed scholar while raising two children. She continued to work for women's suffrage, labour reforms, and other progressive causes, but by c.1915 she began to concentrate on her writing and lecturing, specifically to highlight women's contributions to society across the centuries. From her early work, Women's Work in Municipalities (1915), to her classic Women as a Force in History (1946), she prefigured many of the themes that would be taken up by womens' historians and feminists of later generations. She also collaborated with her husband on several influential volumes, such as The Rise of American Civilization (1927) and The Basic History of the United States (1944). Although she managed to inject some of her own findings about women's roles into these collaborations, both this element and her own contribution tended to be overshadowed by her husband's towering reputation, and only in later decades did her own work come to be truly recognized. |
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