Laura F. Edwards

Laura F. Edwards is an American historian. She has authored five books on U.S. history: Gendered Strife and Confusion (1997), Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore (2000), The People and their Peace (2009), A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2015), and Only the Clothes on Her Back (2022).

Originally an oboist as a student, she became interested in history during high school. After obtaining a PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she became a professor at the University of South Florida, University of California, Los Angeles, and Duke University, before becoming Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor of the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University. She is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow and has won several awards for her work, including the 2023 Merle Curti Award for Social History. She has served as president of the Southern Association for Women Historians (2008) and the Southern Historical Association (2026).