Good Wives

About Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich received her B.A. from the University of Utah, her M.A. from Simmons College, and her Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire. She was previously Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire and is currently Phillips Professor of Early American History and 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University. Her book A Midwife's Tale won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, and the American Historical Society's John H. Dunning and Joan Kelly Memorial Prizes. Ulrich's discovery of Martha Ballard and work on the diary has been chronicled in a documentary film written and produced by Laurie Kahn-Leavitt with major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the "American Experience" television series. Ulrich is also the author of numerous articles and reviews and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and many other honors and awards.

Praise

"[Ulrich] makes a modern reader understand what it would have been like to have been born female in early New England...a truly remarkable achievement." -- Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University

A gravestone in northern New England proclaims that a woman was "Eminent for Holiness...Prudence, Sincerity...Meakness...Weanedness From ye World...Publick-Spiritedness ...Faithfulness & Charity."

"A major addition to our historical understanding of women in colonial New England...a path-breaking depiction of wives and mothers." -- Kathryn Kish Sklar, S.U.N.Y., Binghamton