Stern, Madeleine Bettina (1912–) - U.S. Women’s History

Madeleine Bettina Stern was born on July 1, 1912, in New York City to Moses R. and Lillie (Mack) Stern. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1932 and an M.A. from Columbia University in 1934. She taught high school English from 1934 to 1943, when she received a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1945 she opened a rare book store with Leona Rostenberg. She also began writing history, beginning with The Life of Margaret Fuller in 1942. Louisa May Alcott was published in 1950 and Purple Passage: The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslie in 1953. Imprints on History: Book Publishers and American Frontiers was published in 1956 and We the Women: Career Firsts of Nineteenth Century America in 1963. She wrote So Much in a Lifetime: The Story of Dr. Isabel Barrows in 1964, Queen of Publishers’ Row: Mrs. Frank Leslie in 1965, and The Pantarch: A Biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews in 1968. Heads and Headlines: The Phrenological Fowlers came out in 1971, and in 1972 she edited the four-volume Women on the Move . She wrote Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Business with her partner Leona Rostenberg in 1974 and edited The Victoria Woodhull Reader, Louisa’s Wonder Book: An Undiscovered Alcott Juvenile , and Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott in 1975. Stern continued with Plots and Counterplots: More Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott in 1976.