Why a separate page for women composers? In part because they deserve equal recognition with the more prominent male composers, and they often get buried in that list. It was the women who more often had taken piano lessons, played ragtime in the home, demonstrated it in the stores, and who often understood better than many men composers the emotional aspects of the music. Most composed anywhere from their late teens through their late twenties or early thirties when many music-oriented careers were ended by marriage. Even while they were composing they often faced obstacles in the male-dominated publishing world. It is also telling that while both black and white males of all classes contributed to the pool of piano rags with some balance, the vast majority of female composers were white and from middle-class areas. There is an unfortunate dearth of biographical information for most of the women listed here, as the head of a household was usually the one polled for census or survey demographics, leaving little opportunity for details of the female family members to surface. For further information I may suggest certain reference sources, and for an overall view of good references currently available or tucked away in your local library, please check out my Bibliography and Sources page.

Many thanks go to hard-working Dr. Nora Hulse and her colleague Nan Bostick, who have both uncovered much of this nearly impossible-to-find information, and I was able to retreive several interesting finds as well. You can visit Nora, the most prominent authority on women ragtime composers, at her web site, www.nora.hulse.com.