The Eleventh Hour in the Life of Julia Ward Howe

At ninety years old, most people would rest on their laurels. Julia Ward Howe had other plans. The author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" spent her final decade championing pure milk for infants, fighting for women's suffrage, and delivering speeches that stopped audiences in their tracks. This intimate biography, written by her niece Maud Howe Elliott in 1911, captures the last chapter of one of America's most extraordinary women not as a quiet exit, but as a crescendo. Here is Howe in her ninth decade: sharp-tongued, joyful, refusing the slightest notion that age limits purpose. Elliott offers personal anecdotes that reveal a woman who believed life demanded labor and relished its every moment. The biography pulses with Howe's infectious refusal to slow down, her belief that the eleventh hour is still an hour worth fighting for. A window into a life that proves legacy isn't left behind, it's earned until the very end.