THE ANSWER TO "CLARA, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?"

Pasadena, California: : Clara Vista Press,, (1951). Hardcover first edition -. Very good in red cloth with gilt lettering (some dulling to the lettering on the spine). Tipped inside the front cover is a printed letter by the President of Alpha Phi, noting that this book was being given to the attendees of the 1958 convention). Quite scarce now in the original edition. . First printing. Autobiography of a woman defined as "a clubwoman and a philanthropist," born in New York, but who moved to California in the 1880s and made it her home for the rest of her life. While women's clubs are no longer as important in American life as they were during the Progressive Era, her contributions were wide-ranging and significant and far more extensive than this brief list: she was the first president of the California Federation of Women's Clubs, active in politics, a founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Ebell Club (originally called the International Academy for the Advancement of Women) and erected their clubhouse at her expense, director of the Southwest Museum and the Pasadena Humane Society, first woman trustee of Syracuse University (where she had been one of the founders of the Alpha Phi sorority while she was a student there), and after suffrage was gained (she was quoted as saying she was a believer in suffrage politically, socially and morally), she was an organizer of the national League of Women Voters. This book - published when she was turning 96 - depicts her life from her youngest years through the early 1900s (ending with a trip with her family to Europe and the Middle East in 1900-1901, her funding the construction of the maternity wing of the Pasadena Hospital, and some discussion of her contributions towards the building of the Temple Baptist Auditorium, later known as the Philharmonic Auditorium), with only brief excerpts of her writings and short letters for the second half of her life. Illustrated with photographs. 246 pp.