First study of American women composers and attitudes towards women musicians in the nineteenth century. Early American women composers are barely represented in standard reference works, yet their output constitutes a significant proportion of the bound sheet music in the collections in the New York Public Library, Yale University,Boston Public Library, and the New York Historical Society that form the basis of this study. Beginning with the first sheet music published by a woman in America, in the 1790s, the book goes on to examine music by mid-nineteenthcentury composers, including brief biographies of five prominent women active in the 1850s and 60s. Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts.