Boston Glass Ceiling

There was no doubt that Agnes Edwards had ambition. It stemmed from the self-confidence she had gained during her university years and from being in the first generation of women to vote. Her professors at the University of California-Berkeley had encouraged her to pursue a career in publishing or teaching. What's more, she knew she could support herself with her secretarial skills and job experience. So it was, in the fall of 1922, that Agnes left her home in California and journeyed to Boston.

Through three hundred letters, she tells the story of her ambition to become an editor and writer at Boston's prestigious Atlantic Monthly Press, along with the challenges she faced in finding her way in the male-dominated field of book publishing. Both triumphs and disappointments awaited her in the city, as well as an unexpected romance. Going abroad in 1925, she interviewed several authors, including A. A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh.


An entertaining record of one woman's life through the early- to mid-1920s, Boston Glass Ceiling provides a personal and detailed glimpse into Boston at that time and offers keen insight into the publishing world from a woman's perspective.