Snodgrass here “surveys the crafts and talents of a variety of creators and originators occupying the American wilderness.” These women, whose courage, fortitude, and ingenuity comprise the stuff of legends, were also accomplished practitioners in a number of creative pursuits. They were basket makers, potters, and quilters but also equestrians, sharpshooters, and taxidermists, not to mention botanists, banjoists, and herbalists. Snodgrass also identifies biographers, journal keepers, letter writers, memoirists, poets, and pamphleteers as well as actors, circus performers, dancers, guitarists, magicians, and mimes. A series of appendixes facilitates access to accounts of individual women, whose names are listed by art, state, and ethnicity. Here, too, are a chronology of key events in American history and a glossary of terms. The bibliography is extensive and features primary as well as secondary sources. Period illustrations and contemporary photographs punctuate the text of a fascinating work that helps fill the gaps that still exist in the history of American art and culture. A must for American-art and women’s-studies collections.

Booklist

A companion volume to the author’s American Colonial Women and Their Art (also 2018) (see ARBA 2018, entry 519), this book covers the period from 1765 to 1899. The range of arts, presenting the “quest for self-expression” of these women, is quite wide, as there are gymnasts, gamblers, historians, prophets, and botanists included. . . The women and their backgrounds are also quite diverse: a Siberian seamstress who became a “multinational business mogul” in Alaska, the 42nd wife of Brigham Young, and Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last monarch. . . . Four appendixes cover arts, states, ethnology and present a chronology of major moments between 1610 and 1912. A glossary and an 11-page bibliography of primary and secondary resources are also included. This book should spark interest in American women whose lives are little known. Scholars and students in women’s and gender studies programs, or in history departments, may well find new areas to explore after reading this volume. Academic libraries will be most interested in the content here, but other libraries might consider it.—Mark Schumacher

American Reference Books Annual