Elizabeth "Bess" Corey taught school in a number of rural schools across Shelby and Cass counties in Iowa. Letters she wrote home between 1904 and 1908 provide a firsthand account of the realities of life in a country school. The letters were recently published in An Iowa Schoolma'am: Letters of Elizabeth 'Bess' Corey, 1904-1908, edited by Philip L. Gerber and Charlotte Wright and published by the University of Iowa Press.