In this article, Linda Eisenmann examines the role and impact of Barbara Solomon's now classic text in women's educational history, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America. Eisenmann analyzes how Solomon's book influenced, defined, and in some ways limited the field of women's educational history. She shows how current historical research — such as the study of normal schools and academies — grew out of Solomon's work. She points out where the book is innovative and indispensable and where it disappoints us as teachers and scholars in the 1990s. Eisenmann criticizes Solomon for placing too much emphasis on women's access to higher education, thereby ignoring the importance of wider historical and educational influences such as economics, women's occupational choices, and the treatment of women in society at large. Finally, Eisenmann examines the state of subsequent research in women's higher educational history. She urges researchers to investigate beyond the areas defined by Solomon's work and to assess the impact of these neglected subjects on women's experiences in education.

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This exploration of American women's post-World War 11 higher education begins with three stones. These narratives reflect issues women faced when, as educators, they tried to plan curricula and programs for female students, and when, as professionals, they tried to manage their own careers in an era that fiequently sent mixed messages a b u t women's roles and opportunities. They also reveal a quiet type of activism practiced by postwar women educators, an approach which often pales in comparison to the firmer efforts of postsuffrage and World War II activists, or to the lively and boisterous work of late-1960s feminists. However, I will argue that this more muted style, when combined with the era's predilection for individualized solutions to women's concerns, marks a particular postwar approach to advocacy that may be different from other eras but that suited the contextually complicated postwar period.T h e initial story belongs to Agnes Meyer. Meyer was an unusual woman and rather a free spirit in mid-twentieth century America.' In 1907, as Agnes Ernst, she graduated from Barnard College with a love for both art and travel and soon took a job as one of the very few female reporters with the New York Sun. Ernst traveled to Pans, where she became involved in the culture of artists and writers including

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