Legendary Feminist Kate Gleason Comes to Life in Biography Published by RIT Press

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The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason is available for purchase in hardcover for $24.95 or softcover for $17.95 through RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Press.

Susan B. Anthony called her the ideal businesswoman of whom she had dreamed 50 years earlier.

Kate Gleason, groundbreaking 19th century industrialist, mechanical engineer and real estate developer, was her own best invention. Living by the motto, “If I can, I will,” she engineered her own fate as an astute visionary—often regaled by the press as the “female mechanical genius with a Midas touch.”

Janis F. Gleason brings her legendary achievements to light in The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason, published by RIT Press, a scholarly publishing enterprise at Rochester Institute of Technology. A book signing and reception with the author will be held at RIT from 4 to 6 p.m. Nov. 18 in Xerox Auditorium, James E. Gleason Hall. The event is open to the public.

Over the course of two decades, Janis Gleason’s extensive research pertaining to the life of Kate Gleason has taken her from New York to California to South Carolina and over to France. She currently serves as vice president of the Gleason Family Foundation and is a past board president for the Rochester-based Writers & Books.

“The relationship between the Gleason family and RIT is a long and very strong one,” Gleason explains.

“Over the years many apprentices came to the Gleason company from the RIT program. Kate took courses at RIT’s predecessor, Mechanics Institute. Her sister, Eleanor, was the school’s first librarian. Her brother, James, was a trustee for almost 65 years, serving as chairman for 20 of those years. Kate Gleason College of Engineering is the only engineering school in the United States to be named after a woman engineer. Choosing RIT Press to publish this biography made sense from every angle.”

According to Janis Gleason, there has never been a biography written about Kate until now. At family gatherings, tales of Kate’s exploits were both disapproving and contemptuous. She soon learned that Kate’s younger sister, Eleanor, had burned all of her memorabilia and personal effects after her death in 1933 at the age of 68.

The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason came to fruition after the author’s husband, James S. Gleason, the grandnephew of Kate Gleason and chairman of the Gleason Corp., allowed her access to family files which were discovered on the top floor of Gleason Works.

“There were photographs, newspaper articles, a black leather-bound book of Kate’s jottings over a long period of years, and letters—perhaps a hundred, most written by Kate to her brother Jim when he was a student at Cornell University while she was working in the Gleason factory in Rochester,” Janis Gleason recalls.

“Once I read all of those letters, I knew the family’s assessment of Kate was badly askew. So with the perspective of an outsider and the position of an insider, I have attempted to give some insight into this remarkable woman.”

The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason is available for purchase in hardcover for $24.95 or softcover for $17.95 at RIT Press website or by calling RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Press at 585-475-6766.

Note: RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press and its new imprint, RIT Press, are scholarly publishing enterprises at Rochester Institute of Technology. The Press is associated with the Melbert B. Cary Jr. Graphic Arts Collection, one of the country’s premier libraries on the history and practice of printing.