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...And Ladies of the Club
Helen Hooven Santmyer, 1982
1184 pp.

In Brief
...And Ladies of the Club, a novel by Helen Hooven Santmyer, recounts the lives of a group of women in Waynesboro, Ohio, who begin a study club. Over the years the club evolves into a influential community service organization in the town. The books spans decades in the lives of the women involved in the club, between 1868 and 1932. Numerous characters are introduced in the course of the novel, but primary are Anne Gordon and Sally Rausch, who in 1868 as the book begins are new graduates of the Waynesboro Female Seminary. The book flows through decades, as it chronicles the two women's marriages and those of their children and grandchildren. Santmyer focuses not just on the lives of the women in the Club, but also their families, friends, politics, and developments in their small town and the larger world.

Originally published by the Ohio State University Press in 1982 and only selling a few hundred copies, the book was chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection in 1984, making it a best-seller that year. The recognition earned its 88-year-old author critical acclaim and literary recognition; according to the back cover of the 1985 paperback edition, the novel took Santmyer more than 50 years to write. (From the Wikipedia )

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About the Author

• Birth—November 25, 1895
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Death—February 21, 1986
• Where—Xenia, Ohio
• Education—Wellesley College, Massachusetts.; Cambridge
   University, England (a Rhode Scholar)


Helen Hooven Santmyer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved to Xenia, Ohio, when she was five years old. She went to Wellesley College in 1918 and was active in the struggle for women's rights. She attended Oxford University in England and was one of the first female Rhodes Scholars. When she returned to the United States with her first book published, she expected fame and fortune but found instead the Great Depression.

Later, she returned to Wellesley College to teach in the English Department. She also wrote poetry that appeared in anthologies such as The Bookman Anthology of Verse (1922) from Doran and Company. Her sonnet, The Prairie Town, from that collection indicates her talent as a poet.

In 1935, Helen moved back to Xenia becoming the Dean of Women and the head of Cedarville University English department. She was 88 when her most famous work ...And Ladies of the Club was published -- it was a best-seller in 1984. She also wrote Herbs and Apples, Ohio Town and The Fierce Dispute.

She received most of her fame late in life and died on February 21, 1986, in Xenia, Ohio, aged 90. She was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. (From Wikipedia)

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Critics Say. . .
A great novel that is American to its core...so gently memorable, so bursting with life, that those who abandon themselves to its pages will find it claiming a permanent place close to their hearts.
New York Daily News

A warm, evocative, often hilarious picture of society, culture, politics and family life.
Atlanta Constitution
Readers Say. . .
(Ocassionally, when there are few professional reviews, we'll include helpful ones from Barnes and Noble's customers.)


Making a difference: Besides what everybody else said, this book illustrates how simple, ordinary people form the big picture we call History. It gave me goosebumps to realize how much of a difference we can make in our tiny little lives, as a cumulative effort.
Becky, a Gulf Coast Texan, 03/14/2007

This book will earn a place in your heart. [It] earned a special place in my heart when I read it 15 years ago. I got to know the characters as if they were members of my own club, members of my family. My tattered and yellowed paperback copy remains a part of my permanent book collection, as much a survivor of deaths, divorces, births, moves, marriages and remarriages as Anne and Sally. Read it! Get to know the ladies of the Waynesboro Womens Club. You'll not be disappointed. And while you're enjoying this epic treasure, you may also gain insight into a time and place in America you haven't experienced before.
Baby Sister, a Texas Wildflower, 02/10/2007

Times change - people don't: America before the IRS and the tax preparation industry. America before the health care (and health insurance) industry. America as it was between 1868 and 1932. Sounds nostalgic and wonderful, doesn't it? But this is also a pre-pension plan America in which a single female schoolteacher faces penniless old age. This extraordinary novel paints an uncompromising picture of a midwestern town from just after the Civil War until the opening years of the Great Depression, by following the lives of the charter members of the Waynesboro Woman's Club. I do think this story - or these stories, more accurately - could better have been told in a series of novels, because this single very long book necessarily passes over much that its readers might want to explore more fully. Sometimes key events are 'told' in a few paragraphs, when it would have been better to 'show' these events in additional chapters. However, I found it amazing that the author managed to tell all the tales included as fully as she did. What impressed me most was the matter-of-fact way she managed to include material that's seldom found in novels about well-mannered and educated middle-class ladies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anne Alexander Gordon, Sarah Cochran Rousch, and their friends and descendants live fully realized lives, confirming what we ought to know already but sometimes find it hard to believe: that while times, politics, wars and economies may change, people don't. All that changes is how they fit themselves into the realities of their times.
Nina M. Osier, author, 04/09/2005



Amazing saga! I've never been so sad to finish a book, especially amazing since this book is huge! The characters are so real and so well developed that I truly felt a part of their long, well lived lives. It's also a facinating portrait of the time in which these women lived. I am a voracious reader but have never become so invested in a story as I did with this book. Its long and worth every page!
A reviewer, 06/24/2004

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Book Club Discussion Questions
Sorry—for the ladies of your club, none are available for this book.

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