Caroline Wells Healey Dall

author

Caroline Wells Healey Dall

1822–1912

A fierce 19th-century reformer, lecturer, and writer, she pushed for women's education, work, and public voice long before those ideas were widely accepted. Her life moved through Boston's Unitarian and Transcendentalist circles and into the heart of the early women's rights movement.

2 Audiobooks

Margaret and Her Friends or, Ten conversations with Margaret Fuller upon the mythology of the Greeks and its expression in art, held at the house of the Rev. George Ripley, Bedford Place, Boston, beginning March 1, 1841

Margaret and Her Friends or, Ten conversations with Margaret Fuller upon the mythology of the Greeks and its expression in art, held at the house of the Rev. George Ripley, Bedford Place, Boston, beginning March 1, 1841

by Caroline Wells Healey Dall, Margaret Fuller

The College, the Market, and the Court or, Woman's relation to education, labor and law

The College, the Market, and the Court or, Woman's relation to education, labor and law

by Caroline Wells Healey Dall

About the author

Born in Boston in 1822, Caroline Wells Healey Dall grew up in a well-connected Unitarian family and received an unusually strong education for a girl of her time. She became a teacher while still young, later married Unitarian minister Charles H. A. Dall, and built a public career as a writer, speaker, and reformer.

Dall is remembered as an early advocate for women's rights, especially in education, employment, and legal status. She took part in the National Women's Rights Convention, helped found the New England Women's Club, and wrote books and essays that argued women should have fuller access to intellectual and professional life. She was also closely connected to the wider Transcendentalist world, with ties to figures such as Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody.

Alongside her reform work, Dall left behind memoirs, journals, and other writings that give a vivid picture of 19th-century American intellectual life. She died in Washington, D.C., in 1912, but her work still stands as part of the long history of women claiming a larger place in public life.