Corson, Juliet

Juliet Corson (1841–1897) was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts; in 1847 her family moved to New York City, where she grew up.

A sickly child, she was taught at home by her mother rather than attending school. When Corson was eighteen, she took a job as a librarian at the Working Women’s Library, spending nights on the library’s sofa to save on rent. To supplement her income she wrote poetry and articles for magazines and newspapers.

Corson became concerned about the plight of poor women in the city. Immigrants were flooding into New York, and in 1873 the nation went into an economic recession that continued for years. Working-class people lost their jobs, and new employment was hard to find. Corson volunteered as secretary to the Women’s Educational and Industrial Society of New York, whose purpose was to offer free vocational training for unemployed working-class women. She was asked to teach cookery, even though she had little knowledge of the subject; the hope was that students might find jobs as domestics. Corson studied German and French cookbooks and began offering classes in her home. In 1874 the Society moved into a building that housed classrooms as well as free dormitories for unemployed women taking courses at the school. The following year, Juliet Corson began writing articles on cookery for newspapers and magazines and lecturing on the subject in various locations in New York.