Author, Journalist. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, she was a cookbook and cooking school pioneer.  A champion of nutritious meals for the poor, she began working as a librarian at the Working Women’s Library, where the plight of the poor affected her greatly. Well educated, she supplemented her income by writing for newspapers – eventually she became the only woman writer on staff at the “National Quarterly Review”. In 1873, as a volunteer at the Women’s Educational and Industrial Society of New York, she taught cooking even though she had limited knowledge of the culinary arts. Self-taught, her classes were originally intended to help poorer women, but they attracted the attention of her upper-class acquaintances and press colleagues, who encouraged her to teach, write articles and open her own cooking school. In 1876 she founded the New York Cooking School where she charged tuition on a sliding scale so that no one would be turned away.  Her first cookbook, “The Cooking School Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-day Cookery”, published in 1877, set forth guidelines for making  “the most wholesome and palatable dishes at the least possible cost.” Among her other well-regard publications are “Training Schools of Cookery” (1879) and “Miss Corson’s Practical American Cookery” (1886). She died alone in New York City, New York in 1897. (bio by: BKGenie)