Boston Athenæum

February 16, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Until recently, history remembered Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1876-1948) as the wife of wealthy Bostonian Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937). Their Brookline estate is now Larz Anderson Park. However, the public perception of Mrs. Anderson as an heiress and socialite was shattered in April 2016 with the publication of Stephen Moskey’s Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, a new account of the couple’s extraordinary lives. Based on research conducted in libraries and archives across the US and Europe (including the Boston Athenæum), Moskey’s work has transformed Mrs. Anderson’s legacy and public image. We now know her for what she was: a prolific writer and editor of over 40 titles; a librettist and impresario of popular musicals performed during the Great Depression; and a courageous nurse serving on the battlefields of France and Belgium during WWI. Mrs. Anderson emerges from the pages of this book as an exemplary woman of the early mod