The first full biography of Julia Ward Howet́he author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic and an early and powerful feminist pioneer--a groundbreaking figure in the abolitionist and suffrage movements. Julia Ward (1819-1910) was an heiress who married a handsome accomplished doctor named Samuel Howe who made great strides working with the blind and deaf. However he wasted her inheritance, mistreated and belittled her, and tried to stifle her intellect and freedom. Nevertheless Julia persisted and through six children and a troubled private life she wrote poetry and a mildly shocking sexual novel that was published to good reviews. She also was acquainted with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman and other writers and wrote the words to probably the most famous anthem in the country's history--the Civil War hymn. The war was an important time in the Howes' lives, both of whom were abolitionists. Moreover the Civil War challenged nineteenth-century ideas of separate spheres for men and women, and this transformation was also an invitation for Julia to rebel against her turbulent marriage. At home, she fought a second Civil War, finding ways to combine home life with literary creativity and a political career--and founding Mother's Day both to honor women and to recruit them to her causes. After her husband died, Julia lived another forty years (to the age of ninety-one). Like the formidable Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Victoria Woodhull, Julia Ward Howe was a dynamic, tireless, and successful activist for women's rights, pacifism, and social reform. Now esteemed author Elaine Showalter tells Ward Howes' story as an influential public female and brings to life the fascinating times in which she lived and the struggles she overcame.