How American Biographies Treat Women:

A Comparison of the Dictionary of American Biography and the American National Biography.

National Biographies of the United States

• Dictionary of American Biography (DAB)– 20 original volumes – Published in 1937; project

started in 1926.– Additional supplements

cover figures that died after 1937.

– Written by 2,243 authors.

• American National Biography (ANB)– 24 volumes – Published in 1999; project

started in 1986.– Written by 61,000

authors.

Authority• Dictionary of American Biography

– Published by Scribner & Sons.– Project directed by (newly created) American

Council of Learned Societies.– Editorial Board consisted of leading historians and

members of the Carnegie Institution.– Mostly men contributed to the entries with women

serving as library assistant and copy editors.

Authority• American National Biography

– Published by Oxford University Press.– Chief Editors- John A. Garraty-Prof. Emeritus of history -Columbia

University & Mark C. Carnes- Prof of History- Barnard College.– Project directed by American Council of Learned Societies.

Stanley Katz, the president emeritus of the council helped with the publication of the new source and states in his forward that it is “the major reference work of American biography of our generation.”

– The editorial board consisted of 14 renowned American Historians; including 4 women.

– Women were among senior editors, contributors, project editors and copy editors.

Scope• Dictionary of American Biography

– Focused on people who had lived in the U.S. and made significant contributions to this country.

– Made efforts to expand coverage of older biographies and include people in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and literature.

– Although it included many women the introduction shows a male dominated philosophy.

– “The length of the article has not been determined solely by the relative importance of the man, but also by the amount of available authentic material, by the nature of his career…”

– Yet, it shortchanged women by omitting important aspects of their careers.

Scope• American National Biography

– Included 17,500 biographies.– The goal was to replace the DAB with a fresh source that

included many people that were overlooked.– Focused on ordinary men and women who made some

contribution to the county’s history.– “The ANB brings together the diverse voices of the past

without claiming that they blend harmoniously…priority was given to persons, especially women and minorities, about whom information or new ways of interpreting old data had become available.”

Praise for American National Biography

• It won the Dartmouth Medal in 1999- This is presented by RUSA for reference works of outstanding quality and significance.

• Many reviewers praised the efforts to include previously underrepresented people.– “In addition to the icons of American history… we find biographies of

women from all walks of life: first ladies, midwives, suffragists and scientists.” - Dudley Barlow

– “This is the charm of our craft: The search to reconstruct what went before, a quest illuminated by those ever changing prisms that continually place old questions in new light. To this search the ANB makes a dazzling contribution. It tells us about the American past, and it tells us about ourselves.” -Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Reformers Women’s Rights Activists / Suffragists

Abolitionists

Dorthea Dix Susan B. Anthony Harriet Beecher Stowe

Lydia Child Lucy Stone Angelina Grimke

Ann Porter Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell Sarah Grimke

Jane Addams Elizabeth Cady Stanton Lucretia Mott

Ellen Gates Starr Margaret Fuller Abbey Kelly Foster

Lillian Wald Julia Ward Howe Sallie Holley

Ida M. Tarbell Anna Howard Shaw Sojourner Truth

Catherine Beecher Carrie Chapman Catt

Ida Barnett- Wells

Results• The ANB included detailed biographies of all 24 women

selected.• Women left out of the DAB

– Ida Barnett-Wells- editor and antilynching activist– Sojourner Truth- Black abolitionist and women’s rights

activist.– Sallie Holley- abolitionist and educator.– Angelina Grimke- leading abolitionist (The DAB includes her

under the entry of her sister and leaves out her major contributions.)

– Ellen Gates Starr- co-founder of Hull House.

Results• While the entries for the other women are in the

DAB, the biographies in this work are shorter and neglect major contributions.

• Entries on these women generally include chauvinistic language, information unrelated to the woman’s contribution and have a condescending tone.

Jane Addams- DAB– This mentions her frail health frequently. Also notes “Her

tact in handling people, and social situations, her affection for children…disarmed criticism and attracted love, and her physical disability and precarious health made it natural for friends to want to protect her.”

– It suggests that as a spinster she was unconventional.

Jane Addams- ANB• This work focuses on her many important

achievements. • At College, she was class president, editor of the

school’s magazine, president of the literary society and valedictorian.

• She became the first woman president of the National Conference of charities and Correction, a vice president of the National-American Woman Suffrage Assoc., a founding member of the NAACP and the first U.S. woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

• In two newspaper polls in 1913, Addams was listed first or second as providing the most value to the country.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell- DAB

• This notes that the world considered Dr. Blackwell as either “mad or bad” because she became a doctor.

• Comments that her influential work helping to organize field nurses during the Civil War “did much to help win sympathy for the feministic movement in medicine.”

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell- ANB

• This work provides a more expanded view of her achievements with a more modern analysis.– In 1849, she received her medical degree and was the first

woman in the U.S. or Europe to accomplish this.– Her conception of her gender influenced how she thought

about and later taught medicine.– Opposing the increased use of gynecological surgery to cure

women, she accused male doctors of being irresponsible and claimed they were making women sterile unnecessarily.

Dorthea Dix- DAB• This sources describes her as only a

humanitarian.• After listing the many books that she wrote, it

adds “She was, however, nervous, overstrained, and delicate, with incipient lung trouble.”

• It includes the quote “I am naturally timid and diffident, like all my sex.”

Dorthea Dix- ANB• This work gives a vastly different portrayal describing

her as a strong social reformer.• This work includes the quote “ I implore. I demand pity

and protection for those of my suffering , outraged sex.”• This account describes how her far reaching reforms

changed the way the mentally ill were treated in the United States and Europe.

• It also notes her many other reform initiatives on behalf of other causes.

Abigail Kelly Foster- DAB

• Despite the fact that she was a strong advocate for women’s rights and abolition, this source includes a quote describing her appearance: “She is described by those who knew her as an attractive, kindly person with unassuming manners, and a good housekeeper.”

Abigail Kelly Foster- ANB

• Describing Foster as more radical this source contradicts the analysis included in the DAB by noting that she found staying at home for an extended period of time “perfectly killing.”

• This source also explores her radical views in more detail.– “Whatever ways and means are right for men to adopt in

reforming the world are right also for women to adopt in pursuing the same object.”

– It notes that she asserted that women could only become free of their reliance on men by becoming self-supporting.

Angelina and Sarah Grimke- DAB

• This source attempts to describe the contributions of both sisters in the same entry.

• In this way, it neglects important contributions of both sisters and fails to depict them as important abolitionists on their own.

• This source also states that Sarah influenced Angelina to take up the abolitionist cause. This is incorrect.

Angelina Grimke- ANB• Notes her remarkable achievements.

– Was the first white Southern woman to speak up publicly against slavery, she persuaded Sarah to join her in the anti-slavery crusade, was the first woman to speak at the Massachusetts State House- spoke for 3 days.

– She was a strong proponent of women’s rights and wrote: “Women should be allowed not only help write the laws of the land but to sit in the seats of its government.”

– She was one of the first reformers to link the ideas of abolitionism and feminism.

Sarah Grimke- ANB

• This source notes that her Epistle to the Clergy of Southern States provided a strong refutation of the Southern arguments for slavery.

• The explanation of her other works shows that she was a serious historian and had an acute understanding of the current conditions of women in the U.S. and in Europe.

• The notions that she asserts in her works shows that she voiced radical views on women’s rights calling upon women to “rise to the degree of dignity…and to maintain those rights and exercise those privileges which every woman’s common sense…tells her are inalienable.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton- DAB

• This source glosses over her many activities on behalf of woman’s suffrage and only describes them generally.

• It then adds a description of her physical appearance which serves to diminish her achievements. “Her strong and undaunted manner made her very impressive, though she was short in stature, not exceeding five feet three inches. Her skin was fresh and fair, and the good-natured expression of her face was accentuated by the merry twinkle rarely absent from her clear, light blue eyes.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton- ANB• This source offers a more detailed perspective on Stanton’s

complex views on women’s rights and reveals her denouncement of black suffrage.

• She demanded rights for married women, including rights to property, wages and the ability to leave an abusive marriage. She argued that women should have the right to decide with whom and when to bear children.

• She urged women to reject churches and ministers who insisted on asserting their inequality.

• Through she was a leading advocate for women’s suffrage, she suggested that allowing black men to vote endangered white women and questioned why black men should obtain suffrage before white women.

Ida M. Tarbell- DAB• Here she is identified as only a writer.• The source describes her as “Tall, grave sturdy and

alert….Never a profound political analyst, but a remarkably sensitive reporter to an early twentieth-century audience eager for ethical instruction” and includes her as part of the “secular clergy” of the age.

• This source underestimates her contribution as well as her skill as a leading muckraker.

Ida M. Tarbell-ANB• Identified as an investigative journalist and historian,

this source praises her as “the most outstanding female investigative journalist that America has ever produced.”

• It notes that she was the only woman in her freshman class at Alleghney College.

• This describes her exposé of Standard Oil as contributing to the company’s dissolution and encouraging government legislation.

• It credits her Life of Abraham Lincoln series for helping McClures’s magazine prosper.

Susan B. Anthony-DAB• This source provides a short description, devoid of

important details.• It includes a newspaper reporter’s description of her

appearance in her thirties and follows this by noting that in her later years, “her face was lined, angular, and somewhat austere, but lighted with the spiritual beauty which life-long devotion to high purposes often imparts. She was of the militant type, and…she not infrequently displayed some of the less pleasant characteristics which such warfare is likely to produce in a soldier.”

• This condescending description fails to do justice to her achievements.

Susan B. Anthony- ANB

• Exploring her activities more in depth, this source describes her tireless efforts as she constantly traveled throughout the country to deliver lectures.

• It also remarks that she went beyond women’s suffrage by using her fame to give any women’s organization access to a national platform. She also promoted the idea of universal suffrage.

• It asserts that she dedicated herself to ensuring that the history of the women’s movement survived. She accomplished this through her biography, based on a large archive she accumulated, and the 3 volume, History of Woman Suffrage, to which she contributed. She personally sent these works to thousands of academic and public libraries.

Conclusion• In many ways the modern American National Biography

gives American women the historical credit they deserve.• It not only includes more women, but offers biographies

that explore their full accomplishments and contributions.• It uses modern scholarship to include the most important

details on the figures that it portrays.• The extensive bibliographies, that follow each entry, list

most primary sources available, as well as their locations. They also include accessible and current secondary source treatment of each figure.