Louise Pound

Book excerpt: Eager to challenge social norms during the Victorian age, Louise Pound was an iconoclast responsible for challenging America¿s views on women, academics, and sports. Discarding the traditional corset to accommodate her sports activities, her athletic prowess resulted in her being a world-class athlete in both tennis and golf. She became a local legend after winning several matches against her male contemporaries. She is now recognized for having layed the social groundwork for female athletes like ¿Babe¿ Didrikson Zaharias. Unable to get accepted into an American post-graduate program, she battled institutional sexism and obtained her Ph.D. in Germany in less than a year. She soon became a world-renowned philologist, American folklorist and educator, and she was the first academician to advocate the recognition of American English as a distinct language from that spoken in Great Britain. Although she is often known for little more than being the love interest of lesbian author Willa Cather, the author debunks such claims, giving sound evidence that the attraction was not reciprocated.