Elizabeth Harrison (1849-1927) founded the National Louis University in Chicago, originally meeting in the Art Institute. She was a friend of Maria Montessori, with whom she spent time in Rome in 1912-13, and of Jane Addams, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and social reformer, and a co-founder of the National Parent Teachers Association (the PTA). National Louis University maintains an extensive archive of her books and papers. A voluminous writer, she considered her books to be an essential way of reaching the public with her message of the importance of early childhood education. She was immensely energetic and had lively intellectual interests that ranged from cartoons, the philosophy of Schiller, the Star island poet Cecilia Thaxter, to Raphael and Shakespeare. She believed that children had a great deal to teach adults and this volume is perhaps the clearest affirmation of that philosophy."