Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell) Drake

Emma F. Angell Drake, also published as Emma Frances Angell Drake, was an American physician and author born in 1849. Sources about her life describe a remarkably wide-ranging career: she trained at Boston University Medical College, worked as a physician and educator, and later became known as a writer on women’s health, temperance, and social reform.

Her best-known books include What a Young Wife Ought to Know, along with titles such as What a Woman of Forty-Five Ought to Know and Maternity Without Suffering. In these works, she wrote in a direct, practical way about marriage, health, and motherhood for women readers who were often offered very little plainspoken guidance.

Biographical sources also connect her with the woman suffrage movement and public life in Idaho, where she was active as a reformer and legislator. Taken together, the record shows someone who moved comfortably between medicine, writing, and civic work, using each to reach women readers and voters at a time of major social change.