A delightful collection of 150 profiles of women who refused to confine themselves to the nineteenth-century Victorian model for proper womanhood. During the Victorian era, a woman's pedestal was her "Women should not be expected to write, or fight, or build, or compose scores. She does all by inspiring man to do all." -Ralph Waldo Emerson "There is nothing more dangerous for a young woman than to rely chiefly upon her intellectual powers, her wit, her imagination, her fancy." -Godey's Lady's Book magazine But, scores of nineteenth-century American women chose to live life on their terms. In this book you will meet women who refused to remain on a Victorian pedestal. In San Francisco, a courtesan appeared as a plaintiff in court, suing her clients for fraud. In Montana, a laundress in her seventies decked a gentleman who refused to pay his bill. A forty-three-year-old schoolteacher plunged down Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. A frail lighthouse keeper pulled twenty-two sinking sailors out of the ocean off Rhode Island. A pair of Colorado madams fought a public pistol duel over their mutual beau. Two lady lovebirds were legally wed in Michigan. An ad hoc abolitionist spirited away scores of slaves on the Underground Railroad. A Secessionist spy swallowed a secret message as she was arrested, claiming that no one could capture her soul. Featuring fifty black-and-white photos from the era. Perfect for fans of Women Who Run with the Wolves or Badass Affirmations

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