Elizabeth DeWolfe

Elizabeth DeWolfe is a historian and award-winning author whose work explores ordinary women in extraordinary situations. Her most recent work uncovers the remarkable true story of a previously unknown “girl spy.” Jane Tucker was a Maine-born, Boston stenographer scrabbling to get by as a single woman in the Gilded Age, until she was offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy details Tucker’s adventure as an undercover detective with a ten-week mission. Her target: Madeleine Pollard, former mistress of Congressman William C. P. Breckinridge, whom Pollard had sued for breach of promise when he failed to marry her. Written with all the intrigue and suspense of a detective tale, Alias Agnes chronicles Tucker and Pollard’s lives as women at the cusp of the twentieth century—the opportunities that beckoned them and the challenges that thwarted their dreams.

DeWolfe’s previous books include The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories which explored the 1849 death of a textile mill worker in Saco, Maine, and was honored with book awards in history and in true crime. Her earlier writing on the nineteenth-century anti-Shaker activist Mary Marshall Dyer, Shaking the Faith (2002) and Domestic Broils (2010), received awards from the Communal Studies Association. DeWolfe has also written shorter pieces published in Farmer-ish, Down East magazine, Nursing Clio, and elsewhere.

While DeWolfe would like to spend all her time in archives uncovering hidden history, a day job does help fund her writing endeavors. DeWolfe is professor of history at the University of New England (Biddeford, Maine). An alumnus of Colgate University, she earned graduate degrees at the University at Albany (MA) and Boston University (PhD, American and New England Studies). She joined the UNE faculty in 1996 and teaches undergraduate courses in women’s history and historical research methods. DeWolfe lives in southern Maine with her husband Scott DeWolfe, a rare book and ephemera dealer who provides her with ideas and old documents for many, many research projects.