author
Kate Gannett Wells
1838–1911
A thoughtful essayist, educator, and reformer, she spent decades working on questions of schooling, ethics, and public life. Her career also reflects a striking contradiction of her era: she was active in women’s organizations while becoming a leading voice against woman suffrage.
1 Audiobook
Campobello: An Historical Sketch
by Kate Gannett Wells
About the author
Born Catherine Boott Gannett in London in 1838 to American parents, she was raised in a prominent Unitarian family and later married Samuel Wells. Writing under the name Kate Gannett Wells, she built a career as an author, lecturer, and public figure whose work ranged from essays and educational writing to books on ethics and social questions.
She was deeply involved in civic and educational work. Wells served for many years on the Massachusetts Board of Education and was active in the New England Women’s Club, showing how seriously she took women’s intellectual and public roles outside the home.
At the same time, she became one of the best-known anti-suffragists in Massachusetts, arguing against extending the vote to women even while supporting women’s influence in education, charity, and reform. That tension makes her an especially interesting figure today: a writer and reformer whose life opens a window onto the debates and limits of women’s public activism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.