Mary E. Clemmer Ames Hudson was believed to be the highest paid American newspaperwoman of the post-Civil War era. Yet she always minimized her commitment to a career. According to Edmund Hudson, her second husband, she truly believed that "the best thing that can happen to any woman is to be satisfactorily loved, to be taken care of, to be made much of, and to make much of the life and the love utterly her own in her own home." Her ambivalence toward a career stemmed from her desire to preserve her image as a respectable Victorian woman at the same time as she worked doggedly to climb to the top of a competitive occupation. An examination of her life shows the inner conflicts of a woman who maintained, on the one hand, that all she wanted was to be cherished and protected, while, on the other hand...