§41. Emma Hart Willard. XXIII. Education. Vol. 17. Later National Literature, Part II. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.

XXIII. Education.

§ 41. Emma Hart Willard.

The first effective protest against this view was made by Mrs. Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870). After a teaching experience which began at the age of seventeen, she drew up in 1816 an Address to the Public, Particularly to the Legislature of New York, Proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education. At the urgent advice of Governor Clinton the legislature voted (1819) that the academy which Mrs. Willard had founded should be entitled to share in the state funds. Though these funds were probably never granted by the regents and consequently never became available, the institution has the credit of being the first institution, in America at least, for the higher education of women to which state aid was voted. Mrs. Willard wrote many textbooks and was credited by her generation with opening to women the “masculine subjects” of mathematics and the descriptive sciences.