Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834

Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834. By Emily Clark. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2007. Pp. xvi, 287. $59.95 clothbound, ISBN 978-0807-83122-9; $22.50 paperback, ISBN 978-0-807-85822-6.)

In 1727, a group of Ursuline nuns arrived in New Orleans. Like their sisters back home in France, the mission of these women was to educate women and girls and spread the CathoUc faith. Their ideals and the community that they founded would survive not only the long voyage from France but also the city's passage from French to Spanish colonial rule and finally its integration into the new, primarily Protestant, American RepubUc. Emily Clark's book teUs the story of how this remarkable community of women adapted to these changes and in the process helped shape American history.

From the outset, the nuns were forced to compromise and adapt to meet the needs of their new environment. The leaders of New Orleans originally sought...