| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Andrea Hamilton. A Vision for Girls: Gender, Education, and the Bryn Mawr School. Foreword by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2004. Pp. xv, 237. $39.95.
What makes an institutional biography worthy of publication? In the case of Andrea Hamilton's book, it might be the fact that this girls' school in Baltimore, Maryland, was unique from the moment it was established in 1885 until the 1920s. Or it could be because the school since then often mirrored its sister institutions. It could even be because of the school's close association with the eminent educator M. Carey Thomas and the successful author Edith Hamilton. But it should not be because Bryn Mawr School (BMS) officials tried for more than three years to suppress this book's publication. That they failed is testimony not only to the author's persistence but also to the value of the story she has to tell and the skill with which she tells it.	1
Hamilton divides the history of BMS into three different periods. The brainchild of M. Carey Thomas and her latter-day companion Mary Garrett, the school was known at the outset for its rigorous standards and demanding curriculum. For more than forty years its alumnae were guaranteed Bryn Mawr College admission. To qualify for a BMS diploma, even those students who did not plan to continue their education had to pass the college's entrance examination. Thomas wanted the school she founded to "inspire women across the country" (p. 21), raising not only their educational but also their life ambitions. Because she lived in Pennsylvania, Thomas relied heavily on Hamilton, who served for twenty-six years as the school's headmistress. Hamilton often found herself caught between what Thomas wanted for the school and what its teachers and students could deliver.	. . .

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