In 1889 an unknown but determined Jane Addams arrived in the immigrant-burdened, politically corrupt, and environmentally challenged Chicago with a vision for achieving a more secure, satisfying, and hopeful life for all. Eleven years later, her scheme, as she called it, had become Hull-House and stood as the template for the creation of the American settlement house movement while Addams's writings and speeches attracted a growing audience to her ideas and work.
The third volume in this acclaimed series documents Addams's creation of Hull-House and her rise to worldwide fame as the acknowledged female leader of progressive reform. It also provides evidence of her growing commitment to pacifism. Here we see Addams, a force of thought, action, and commitment, forming lasting relationships with her Hull-House neighbors and the Chicago community of civic, political, and social leaders, even as she matured as an organizer, leader, and fund-raiser, and as a sought-after speaker, and writer. The papers reveal her positions on reform challenges while illuminating her strategies, successes, and responses to failures. At the same time, the collection brings to light Addams's private life. Letters and other documents trace how many of her Hull-House and reform alliances evolved into deep, lasting friendships and also explore the challenges she faced as her role in her own family life became more complex.
Fully annotated and packed with illustrations, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, Volume 3 is a portrait of a woman as she changedand as she changed history.
This volume will become the indispensable work to understand Jane Addams and Hull-House.--Allen F. Davis, author of American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams
"What a gift of scholarship Mary Lynn Bryan has created in this volume! It is breathtaking in its depth and detail. Bryan's decades of work have been crucial in returning Jane Addams to her rightful place to be recognized as one of the greatest Americans. In this exciting volume, readers meet Addams as she begins her most important life projects: the founding of Hull-House; popularizing pragmatic democracy in a changing world; and her work for peace and international understanding. With decades of knowledgeable and meticulous scholarship, Bryan has selected writings that illuminate Addams' path from an idealistic, but not naive, young woman facing the great challenges of Chicago and America at the end of the nineteenth century, to the influential and beloved reformer, policy maker, and international social activist. Addams contemporaries believed her to be the greatest American woman of her time, but this volume reveals a far more complex story than one of individualism heroism. While Addams accomplished great things through her own determination, dedication, intelligence, and belief in the value of all peoples, we learn in this volume that she did not achieve great things alone. Far from it, hundreds of women and men worked directly with Addams and supported her vision for a new American society that could truly begin to fulfill its promises of equality, opportunity, and inclusion. Through the selection of crucial writings of the period, and meticulous, detailed scholarship, Bryan opens up the world of Chicago and Progressive activism in the last decades of the nineteenth century. This volume will be a reference source for decades to come for those wanting to learn about the people and events of the Progressive period, Chicago, philanthropy, social work, the history of peace, and many other topics."--Wendy E. Chmielewski, coeditor of Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy
