Methodists and Women's Education in Ontario, 1836-1925

Alexander D. Gregor is associate dean of the Faculty of Education at the
University of Manitoba and co-editor of Postsecondary Education in
Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

This book provides an excellent window into women’s education in
Canada. The selected timeframe nicely straddles the period between the
inception of the “ladies college” and the eventual acceptance of
women into the public university. As a historical study, the book is
carefully crafted within the constraints of its chosen subject, and the
result is something with far broader implications and interest.

Selles does a particularly thorough job of pulling together the
disparate and extensive

related scholarship on women’s education in general, and of presenting
a comprehensive framework for understanding the specific phenomenon of
Methodists in Ontario. Also note-

worthy is the book’s discussion of Methodism’s increasing emphasis
on reason and social

responsibility.

Selles’s book will be of substantial value to anyone interested in
social history, the history of religion, or the history of education.