Separate Lives

Mary Rippon was a pioneer woman educator in the male-dominated world of nineteenth-century academia. As the first female professor at the University of Colorado, she is believed to have been the first woman in the U.S. to teach at a state university. Mary received wide acclaim for her teaching, but Victorian society forced her to lead two very separate lives. "Miss Rippon," as she was always called, was both a professional woman and a mother in an era when these two roles could not be combined. In order to keep her job, she hid her husband and child behind a Victorian veil of secrecy that spanned two continents. Now, for the first time, the full story of the conflicts between this extraordinary woman's public and private lives is revealed.