Judith Barger is an independent scholar who holds PhDs in musicology (Indiana University) and nursing (The University of Texas at Austin). After a career as a United States Air Force nurse, she turned her attention to music, concentrating on music history and the organ. She is the author of Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England (Ashgate 2007) and Beyond the Call of Duty: Army Flight Nursing in World War II (2013). Dr Barger lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA.
Runner-up prize for a reference work for the 2017 Pauline Alderman Awards for Outstanding Scholarship on Women in Music. The adjudicator praised the originality of this work, which is extensively and thoughtfully researched, with clear and methodical structure, and describes the work as an outstanding achievement. ... The book gives an insightful look into what British women from that period were reading, and, by the sheer depth of the catalogue, shows that music was an integral part of the lives of 19th-century women.