As a literary critic Vida Dutton Scudder was of her times, an idealist, but with strong leanings both toward the world and its politics and the church and its organizations. Her life was integrated by her attempts to unite literature, socialism, and Christianity. She was a member of the Wellesley College Department of English for forty-one years (1887-1928) but achieved her fame as an activist Christian socialist. She helped to found college settlements on the East Coast, working at Denison House; she worked to expand higher education for women; she propelled and initiated church organizations; she took part in public debate of the issues of her times (workers' rights, democracy, social community); she wrote many books, including Socialism and Character (1912), her own favorite, about the conjunction between the Christian message of brotherhood and the realities of the economic world. She was forceful in her own character more than...