BAKER, Jean H(ogarth Harvey) 1933-

PERSONAL: Born February 9, 1933, in Baltimore, MD; daughter of F. Barton (an insurance agent) and Rose Lindsay (Hopkins) Harvey; married Ralph Robinson Baker (a physician), September 12, 1953; children: Susan Dixon, Robinson Scott, Robert Walker, Jean Harvey. Education: Goucher College, A.B., 1961; Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1965, Ph.D., 1971. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Episcopalian. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, swimming, and reading mystery stories.

ADDRESSES: Home—8717 McDonogh Rd., Baltimore, MD 21208-1021. Office—Department of History, Goucher College, Towson, MD 21204. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Notre Dame College, Baltimore, MD, instructor of history, 1967-69; Goucher College, Towson, MD, instructor, 1969, assistant professor, 1969-75, associate professor of history, 1975-78, professor of history, 1979-82, Elizabeth Todd professor of history, 1981—. Maryland Historical Magazine, editor, 1979.

MEMBER: Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Council of Learned Societies fellow, 1976; Goucher College Faculty Teaching prize recipient, 1979; National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 1982; Berkshire Prize in History, 1983, for Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century; Willie Lee Rose prize in Southern history, 1989; Newberry Library fellow, 1991.

WRITINGS:

The Politics of Continuity, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1973.

Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1976.

Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1983, new edition, with new preface, Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, Norton (New York, NY), 1987.

The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family, Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

The Lincoln Marriage: Beyond the Battle of Quotations, Civil War Institute (Gettysburg, PA), 1999.

(Editor, with David Herbert Donald and Michael F. Holt) The Civil War and Reconstruction, Norton (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor) Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Feminist Sisters: Profiles of the American Suffragists, Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

James Buchanan, Times Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of Maryland: A History; author of lecture "Not Much of Me: Abraham Lincoln As a Typical American," Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum (Fort Wayne, IN), 1988, part of the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana, Library of Congress, delivered at the llth Annual R. Gerard McMurtry Lecture, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, 1988.

SIDELIGHTS: A respected feminist historian and history professor at Goucher College in Maryland, Jean H. Baker is an acclaimed writer of historical biographies. Her in-depth approach displays comprehensive research as she discerns cultural and sociological influences to support feminist interpretations of the consequences of a male-dominated order in history. Although critics sometimes discount her feminist interpretations as limited in deciphering the complexities of historical personalities, many commend her accomplished prose which recounts the sights and sounds of each era gracefully.

One of Baker's earlier works focuses on the social dynamics of the Democratic Party in the Northern states before, during, and after the Civil War. Published in 1983, and then reissued in 1998, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century examines "the education, political thought, and behavior" of Northern party members, in the words of Heather Cox Richardson in the Historian. Explaining that Northern Democrats of that period endorsed "personal liberty, small government, [and] states' rights," but that their sense of nationalism allowed them to support the Union side in the Civil War, the critic noted that the volume "shines brightest when it explores the relationship of education, minstrel shows, and party rituals to the Democratic mindset."

Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, published in 1987, investigates the work of Baker's predecessors in assessing the life of this puzzling woman. Baker includes meticulously collected letters by scholars to further understanding of the First Lady as a gifted woman whose life was constricted by her times and whose personage was damaged by male-dominated historical interpretation.

Her telling story of the life of Mary Todd Lincoln is considered a comprehensive, but not wholly definitive, work by critics. In her analysis of Baker's book, American Historical Review writer Anne Firor Scott stated that "Feminist historians can find many better cases than this to illuminate the real (as opposed to the self-imposed) consequences of a male-dominated social order." She nonetheless wrote that Mary Todd Lincoln will "undoubtedly become the accepted interpretation of Mary Todd Lincoln's troubled life," and praised Baker's prose and comprehensive research.

The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family, Baker's 1996 chronicle of the Stevenson family, spans two centuries in relating the lineage of a clan who exemplified American liberalism in Illinois. The eldest, Adlai Stevenson, was Grover Cleveland's second vice president and Adlai Stevenson III was a senator. The lives of the Stevenson women mirror emerging societal patterns. Commendatory but unbiased in her tone, Baker focuses especially on the figure of Adlai Stevenson II. Baker's presentation of the one-time governor and failed presidential candidate who confronted McCarthyism in the Red scare era and the Soviets during the Cuban Missile crisis heightens her familial theme.

Richard Norton Smith reflected in the Chicago Tribune, "Baker's sweeping narrative, beautifully written and scrupulously evenhanded, does full justice to Stevenson and his people." New York Times Book Review critic Richard Norton Smith noted Baker's "sharp eye for theme and irony," while Charles H. Zwicker in Presidential Studies Quarterly praised "Baker's thorough study of the Stevensons."

Baker has also edited volumes of history. With David Herbert Donald and Michael F. Holt, she helped compile the 2001 revision of The Civil War and Reconstruction. Their version includes more material on the lives of women during the period, as well as other updates. In 2002, Baker edited Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, presenting essays covering the years between 1850 and 1920, when women were granted the vote in the United States. Baker provides an introductory essay which explains how the American women's suffrage movement interacted with other concurrent events in U.S. history.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Heritage, spring, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, p. 34.

American Historical Review, February, 1989, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 221.

Booklist, August, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 1713.

Book World, October 4, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 4; July 23, 1989, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 12; February 25, 1996, review of The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family, p. 3.

Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1996, p. 47.

Choice, February, 1988, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 959; July, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 1856; December, 1998, review of Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, p. 740.

Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 20; April 8, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 13.

Contemporary Review, October, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 220.

Historian, fall, 2000, Heather Cox Richardson, review of Affairs of Party, p. 135.

History: Reviews of New Books, September, 1983, review of Affairs of Party, p. 228; summer, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 189.

Journal of American History, December, 1983, review of Affairs of Party, p. 668; December, 1998, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 953.

Journal of American Studies, August, 1984, review of Affairs of Party, p. 291; December, 1990, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 415.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 1985, review of Affairs of Party, p. 544.

Journal of Southern History, May, 1986, review of Affairs of Party, p. 307; February, 1989, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 128.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 899; December 15, 1995, review of The Stevensons, p. 1740.

Library Journal, February 15, 1983, review of Affairs of Party, p. 394; August, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 118; February 1, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 82.

Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1987.

National Review, July 31, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 48.

New Yorker, November 9, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 156.

New York Times, August 25, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 23.

New York Times Book Review, September 13, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 38; April 14, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 20.

Presidential Studies Quarterly, Charles H. Zwicker, review of The Stevensons. pp. 460-462.

Publishers Weekly, June 19, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 109; January 1, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 62.

Reference & Research Book News, review of Affairs of Party, p. 141.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), August 9, 1987, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 3; February 25, 1996, review of The Stevensons, p. 1.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1998, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 50.

Washington Post, February 25, 1996.

Wilson Library Bulletin, January, 1998, review of Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 91.