A01=Alexandra M. Nickliss
Author_Alexandra M. Nickliss
Berkely
Category=DNB
Category=DNBH
Category=JBSF1
Category=NHK
Century Club of San Francisco
Columbian Kindergarten Association
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
General Federation of Woman's Clubs
George Hearst
Gilded Age
Higher Education
History of Anthropology
Mount Vernon Ladies Association of Virginia
National Congress of Mothers
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Phoebe Apperson Hearst
San Francisco
Social Gospel
Suffragist Movement
University of California
William Randolph Hearst
Women's History
Women's Movement
Women's Rights
Women's Studies
Product details
- ISBN 9781496245014
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Feb 2026
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life in Power and Politics, Alexandra M. Nickliss offers the first biography of one of the Gilded Age’s most prominent and powerful women. A financial manager, businesswoman, and reformer, Phoebe Apperson Hearst was one of the wealthiest and most influential women of the era and a philanthropist, almost without rival, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hearst was born into a humble middle-class family in rural Missouri in 1842; she died a member of society’s urban elite in 1919. Most people know her as the mother of William Randolph Hearst, the famed newspaper mogul, and as the wife of George Hearst, a mining tycoon and U.S. senator. By age forty-eight, however, after her husband’s death, Hearst had come to control the family’s extravagant estate, demonstrating intelligence and skill as a financial manager.
Supporting urban reforms in the Bay Area, across the country, and around the world, Hearst gave much of her wealth to organizations supporting children, health reform, women’s rights, higher education, municipal policy formation, and urban architecture and design. She worked to exert her ideas and implement plans regarding the burgeoning Progressive movement and held many prominent positions, including as first woman regent of the University of California.
Phoebe Apperson Hearst tells the story of Hearst’s world and examines the opportunities and challenges she faced as she navigated local, national, and international corridors of influence, rendering a penetrating portrait of a fascinating and often contradictory woman.
Hearst was born into a humble middle-class family in rural Missouri in 1842; she died a member of society’s urban elite in 1919. Most people know her as the mother of William Randolph Hearst, the famed newspaper mogul, and as the wife of George Hearst, a mining tycoon and U.S. senator. By age forty-eight, however, after her husband’s death, Hearst had come to control the family’s extravagant estate, demonstrating intelligence and skill as a financial manager.
Supporting urban reforms in the Bay Area, across the country, and around the world, Hearst gave much of her wealth to organizations supporting children, health reform, women’s rights, higher education, municipal policy formation, and urban architecture and design. She worked to exert her ideas and implement plans regarding the burgeoning Progressive movement and held many prominent positions, including as first woman regent of the University of California.
Phoebe Apperson Hearst tells the story of Hearst’s world and examines the opportunities and challenges she faced as she navigated local, national, and international corridors of influence, rendering a penetrating portrait of a fascinating and often contradictory woman.
Alexandra M. Nickliss is an instructor of history at City College of San Francisco and a visiting scholar in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
