"...And Ladies of the Club"
First trade edition (1984)
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| Author | Helen Hooven Santmyer |
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| Cover artist | from Culver Pictures |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Family saga |
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| OCLC | 8050632 |
| 813/.52 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3537.A775 A82 1982 |
"...And Ladies of the Club" is a novel, written by Helen Hooven Santmyer, about a group of women in the fictional town of Waynesboro, Ohio who begin a women's literary club, which evolves through the years into a significant community service organization in the town.
The novel, which looks at the club as it changes throughout the years, spans decades in the lives of the women involved in the club, between 1868 and 1932. Many characters are introduced in the course of the novel, but the primary characters are Anne Gordon and Sally Rausch, who in 1868 are new graduates of the Waynesboro Female College. They marry soon after the opening of the book, and the decades that follow chronicle their marriages and those of their children and grandchildren. Santmyer focuses not just on the lives of the women in the Club, but also their families, friends, politics, and developments in their small town and the larger world.
On the day of their graduation from the Waynesboro Female College in 1868, best friends Anne Alexander and Sarah "Sally" Cochran are invited along with several of the College's female teachers by Mrs. Lowrey, who along with her professor husband operates the College, to become founding members of a new local society, the Waynesboro Women's Club. The club is intended to promote culture and literature among the educated citizens of the Ohio town, while avoiding controversial subjects such as women's suffrage and other reform movements. Socially ambitious Sally agrees to join because she believes the club might become important in the town, and wants to establish herself as a serious-minded member of adult society. Introspective Anne, the class valedictorian, joins in order to support Sally. Other early members of the Club include Miss Louisa Tucker, a beautiful but cold mathematics teacher who later marries the commencement speaker General Deming; scholarly Amanda Reid, who overcame a poor background to earn a degree from Oberlin and has returned to teach at the Female College; Miss Agatha Pinney, an elderly teacher whose sciatica leads to a secret addiction to the laudanum she is prescribed; Mary, Thomasina and Eliza Ballard, the wife and daughters of a prominent local judge; and the Misses Gardiner, two reclusive spinsters whose nephew, Douglas, attends Princeton and becomes a local attorney and judge.
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