Though New York-born, Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) spent much of her life in Boston.

A dynamic and outspoken social reformer, she worked tirelessly for women's suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and world peace, helping to found several organizations in the process.

After seeing some Union troops march off to the Civil War in 1861, she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Her later works, Sex and Education and Modern Society, were well ahead of most people's thinking.

Howe was the first woman to be elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the founder of the Women's Rest Tour Association.

—by Tom Brosnahan

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