1949 Second printing hardcover book, no dust jacket, some staining/spots to pages.  See all photos for condition details.

Maria Mitchell was born and brought up on the island of Nantucket, off the Massachusetts coast, at a time when it was the greatest whale port in the world.  In that seafaring Quaker town, where whalers learned to rely on the stars for safe passage over unknown seas, Maria’s interests naturally turned to the sky.   There, as a child, she “swept” the skies from the “walk” above above her house on Vestal Street.  There, too, from the roof above the Pacific Bank, she discovered the comet of 1847, known as the Maria Mitchell comet, and for that discovery was awarded a gold medal by the King of Denmark.

Yet Maria Mitchell’s life in Nantucket was not entirely astronomical.  She was librarian of the Athenaeum for twenty-five years, and she came to know many of the famous men of the age who came to lecture there.  Like other Nantucket women in the absence of their men on long and hazardous whaling voyages, she became independent and self-reliant.  Like many of them, she was frank and outspoken, with a strong sense of humor.  All these qualities gave her a marked individuality which, with her other abilities, made her a unique figure when she left the island.