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Annie Nathan Meyer (February 19, 1867 – September 23, 1951) was an American author, an anti-suffragist, and a promoter of higher education for women who founded
Within weeks of her wedding, Meyer began organizing a committee to fund a women's college at Columbia in an effort to provide young women with an educational opportunity that she had not enjoyed. In January 1888, Meyer wrote a 2,500-word essay to ''The Nation'' arguing New York City lacked culture in comparison to other major cities because it lacked a liberal arts college for Women's colleges in the United States, women.
Meyer understood that the idea was futile without funding. Working with Ella Weed, she created a committee of fifty prominent New Yorkers willing to support the college she was founding. She then overcame the opposition of the Columbia University trustees by naming the college after Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard, Frederick Barnard, Columbia's then-recently deceased president who had been a strong advocate for coeducation.
The college opened in 1889, across the street from Columbia. Writing about Meyer during a discussion of Anthropology, anthropologists, Charles King (professor of international affairs), Charles King, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, notes that "[a]fter the First World War, instruction in the social sciences—psychology, government, applied statistics, and anthropology—was at least as good at Barnard as at the main university and often better. Virginia Gildersleeve, Barnard's visionary and long-serving dean, placed a premium on hiring the best professors from Columbia for additional lectures west of Broadway."
Delancy Place
', March 29, 2021 The college Meyer founded, Barnard College, is one of the ''Seven Sisters (colleges), Seven Sisters'' of women's colleges in America and ranks today as one of its most elite colleges. Although since its founding, women enrolled at Barnard have been able to attend the Columbia lectures on their level, only men were graduated from the undergraduate school of Columbia until 1983. Enrollment of women in Columbia graduate programs was dependent upon other guidelines and usually, having an undergraduate degree. At one time, Annie Nathan Meyer was the associate editor of ''Broadway Magazine''. She edited ''Woman's Work in America'' (1891) and contributed a series of articles to the New York Evening Post, New York ''Evening Post''. Meyer wrote several novels. Meyer's ''Robert Annys: A Poor Priest'' (1901) is set in Medieval England and features John Ball (priest), John Ball as a character.Buckley, John Anthony and Williams, William Tom, A Guide to British Historical Fiction. G.G. Harrap: London, 1912 (p.40)
Annie Nathan Meyer Papers
Annie Nathan Mayer- Jewish Women's Archive
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Annie Nathan 1867 births 1951 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American women writers American Sephardic Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews American book editors American women novelists American feminist writers Jewish American novelists Jewish feminists Women historical novelists Writers of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages Writers from New York City Anti-suffragists Novelists from New York (state) University and college founders
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
. Her sister was the activist Maud Nathan and her nephew the author and poet Robert Nathan
Robert Gruntal Nathan (January 2, 1894 – May 25, 1985) was an American novelist and poet.
Biography
Nathan was born into a prominent New York Sephardic family. He was educated in the United States and Switzerland and attended Harvard Uni ...
.
Early years and education
She was born inNew York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1867, the daughter of Annie August and Robert Weeks Nathan. The Nathans are one of America's colonial-era Spanish and Portuguese Jews, Sephardic families living in Manhattan who had fled the religious restrictions in their native Spain and Portugal during the fifteenth century. Her great-grandfather was Gershom Seixas, the rabbi leading a prominent synagogue in colonial Manhattan who also suffered repression when he refused to follow the religious dictates of the British. Later, he would assist at the inauguration of George Washington.King, Charles, ''Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century'', pp. 116-117, Anchor Books, Random House, 2019,
During childhood, Meyer encountered many hardships as the Panic of 1873, Crash of 1873 damaged the financial status of her parents. Since she was withheld from public school by her mother's request, Meyer was self-educated and claimed to have read all of the works of Charles Dickens by the age of seven. In 1875, the family moved from New York to Green Bay, Wisconsin for greater employment opportunities.
Meyer later focused her studies carefully in order to enroll in the newly established Columbia College Collegiate Course for Women in 1885 at the all-male Columbia University, Columbia College in Manhattan. It was a program that allowed women to sit for examinations for all undergraduate degrees although they were not allowed to attend the lectures preparing its students for the examinations. The course did not recognize women participants as fully enrolled Columbia students because at the time, officially, the college did not enroll women. A de facto Columbia graduate, she discontinued her participation there when on February 15, 1887, at the age of twenty, she married her second cousin, Alfred Meyer (physician), Alfred Meyer, a prominent physician.
Career
Within weeks of her wedding, Meyer began organizing a committee to fund a women's college at Columbia in an effort to provide young women with an educational opportunity that she had not enjoyed. In January 1888, Meyer wrote a 2,500-word essay to ''The Nation'' arguing New York City lacked culture in comparison to other major cities because it lacked a liberal arts college for Women's colleges in the United States, women.
Meyer understood that the idea was futile without funding. Working with Ella Weed, she created a committee of fifty prominent New Yorkers willing to support the college she was founding. She then overcame the opposition of the Columbia University trustees by naming the college after Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard, Frederick Barnard, Columbia's then-recently deceased president who had been a strong advocate for coeducation.
The college opened in 1889, across the street from Columbia. Writing about Meyer during a discussion of Anthropology, anthropologists, Charles King (professor of international affairs), Charles King, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, notes that "[a]fter the First World War, instruction in the social sciences—psychology, government, applied statistics, and anthropology—was at least as good at Barnard as at the main university and often better. Virginia Gildersleeve, Barnard's visionary and long-serving dean, placed a premium on hiring the best professors from Columbia for additional lectures west of Broadway."Delancy Place
', March 29, 2021 The college Meyer founded, Barnard College, is one of the ''Seven Sisters (colleges), Seven Sisters'' of women's colleges in America and ranks today as one of its most elite colleges. Although since its founding, women enrolled at Barnard have been able to attend the Columbia lectures on their level, only men were graduated from the undergraduate school of Columbia until 1983. Enrollment of women in Columbia graduate programs was dependent upon other guidelines and usually, having an undergraduate degree. At one time, Annie Nathan Meyer was the associate editor of ''Broadway Magazine''. She edited ''Woman's Work in America'' (1891) and contributed a series of articles to the New York Evening Post, New York ''Evening Post''. Meyer wrote several novels. Meyer's ''Robert Annys: A Poor Priest'' (1901) is set in Medieval England and features John Ball (priest), John Ball as a character.Buckley, John Anthony and Williams, William Tom, A Guide to British Historical Fiction. G.G. Harrap: London, 1912 (p.40)
View on women's suffrage movement
In direct conflict to her sister Maud Nathan, a suffragist, Meyer later became known as an opponent of Women's suffrage, suffrage for women. She considered improvement through the education of women as the first objective to be achieved to change the lives of women, rather than delving into politics.Selected works
* ''Barnard Beginnings'' (1935) * ''Helen Brent, M. D.'' (1892) * ''My Park Book'' (1898) * ''Robert Annys: A Poor Priest'' (1901) * ''The Dominant Sex'' (1911) * ''The Dreamer; a Play in Three Acts'' (1912) * ''Women's Work in America'' (1891) * ''It's Been Fun: An Autobiography'' (1951)References
Bibliography
* * Dora Askowith, ''Three Outstanding Women: Mary Fels, Rebekah Kohut [and] Annie Nathan Meyer'', 1941 * Myrna Gallant Goldenberg, ''Annie Nathan Meyer: Barnard Godmother and Gotham Gadfly'', 1987External links
Annie Nathan Meyer Papers
Annie Nathan Mayer- Jewish Women's Archive
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Annie Nathan 1867 births 1951 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American women writers American Sephardic Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews American book editors American women novelists American feminist writers Jewish American novelists Jewish feminists Women historical novelists Writers of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages Writers from New York City Anti-suffragists Novelists from New York (state) University and college founders