Abstract

Mississippi-born woman of letters Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey (1829–1879) deserves a place among nineteenth century American philosophers. Dorsey was a corresponding member of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences. Her lectures there in 1874–1875 on “The Philosophy of the University of France,” “The Aryan Philosophy,” and “The Present Condition of the Question of the Origin of Species” were among the first, if not the first, given by a woman before a learned society in a major city. A second presentation of the evolution lecture was called for and the text was published in The New Orleans Monthly Review. The first two lectures were published as pamphlets by the Academy, listed as Works Received by the St. Louis Journal of Speculative Philosophy and briefly reviewed by the Boston Literary World. The pamphlet on the University of France went through seven editions. The pamphlet on “the Aryan Philosophy” is held in 14 libraries. The pamphlet on the University of France is held in 50. This paper provides a contextualized introduction to her career.Sarah Anne Dorsey’s premature death at the age of 50 while engaged in helping Jefferson Davis, the destitute former president of the Confederacy, complete his memoir of the Civil War, prevented her pursuing the career in philosophy that she had begun 5 years earlier with an invited lecture before the New Orleans Academy of Sciences on the Philosophy of the University of France. The open scandal that broke out in newspapers across the country upon the discovery that her will left all her estate to Davis replaced her image as a distinguished intellectual with that of an eccentric old (!) lady prone to hero worship.But her eclipse was not permanent. Significantly, the beginning of the recovery of her intellectual reputation was due to her association with the New Orleans Academy of Sciences. Reporting on the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Academy, the Times Picayune recalled that “no address was ever enjoyed more” by the members than her lecture on the University of France (2/23/1913).