Author and feminist, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911) was an early advocate of clothing reform for women, urging them to burn their corsets. This memoir originally published in 1896 and serialized, recounts anecdotes from her life in Massachusetts towns of Andover, Gloucester, Newton, and elsewhere. Over her long life she was friendly with: Celia Thaxter, Lucy Larcom, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lydia Marie Childs, Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe.