Mavericks and Mavens of Business History: Miriam Beard and Henrietta Larson

This is the story of two women with differing visions aboutbusiness who have largely been forgotten. Miriam Beard, themaverick daughter of Progressive reformers Charles and MaryBeard, wrote the first international cultural history of thebusinessman in 1938. Henrietta M. Larson was Harvard BusinessSchool's first lady, the first female faculty member and thefirst woman to be tenured there. The two women never met orinteracted. Yet their lives and histories were entangled whenone woman, Henrietta, wrote a critical review about the contributionsof the other. This article uses their untold story to tracethe contentious process of professionalization that sidelinedone maverick outsider and kept a maven insider on the marginsof a fledgling discipline she had helped to create. Its significanceis to make gender central to the reintegration of business andculture and of women's roles in the historiography of business.