Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur) Hecker

Eugene A. Hecker, listed in library and archival records as Eugene Arthur Hecker (born 1884), is a somewhat obscure American author whose name is chiefly remembered for A Short History of Women’s Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. That book was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1910 (with a 1911 edition also documented in archive records) and was later preserved by projects such as Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg.

Hecker’s best-known book traces the legal and social position of women from the ancient world to the modern era, with special attention to England and the United States. The work’s scope shows him as a writer interested in history, public life, and the long development of civil rights, rather than as a novelist or purely literary stylist.

Very little biographical information about his personal life was easy to confirm from reliable sources beyond his full name and birth year. Because of that, Hecker stands out less as a public literary figure and more as an author whose historical work has continued to circulate because of its subject and usefulness to later readers.