Katharine Munzer Rogers, a Professor Emerita of  English from the City University of New York, now lives in Bethesda.  She has published many articles and books on eighteenth- and nineteenth century literature and, since retirement, has pursued her interests in animals and in the Oz books of L. Frank Baum.  Alerted to women’s issues in 1961, when she was forced out of her job for becoming pregnant, she started research on her first book, The Troublesome Helpmate:  A History of Misogyny in Literature (1966).  There she analyzed the hostility to women that has run through the western tradition from its roots in the Bible and classical literature, through many major authors up to the present; in those days, most established critics resolutely denied that such hostility existed in mainstream authors.  Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England (1982) and Frances Burney:  The World of Female Difficulties (1990) examined eighteenth-century women.  In her next book, The Cat and the Human Imagination (1998), Rogers combined her interests in literature, women’s issues, and cats, producing what The New York Times Book Review called “sheer catnip for the intellectual feline lover.”  L. Frank Baum:  Creator of Oz (2002) is a tribute to the author who enlivened Rogers’s childhood with wonderful adventures to the Land of Oz.  It was listed by The New York Times among the Notable Books of 2002.  First Friend:  A History of Dogs and Humans (2005) traces the long relationship between people and their first animal friend from prehistoric times, when dogs earned their keep by guarding, hunting, and herding, to the present, when over ninety percent of them are kept as companions.  The Washington Times reviewer praised this book as entertaining, very informative, and impressively thorough, and  concluded:  “Best of all, the author knows and respects dogs.”  Rogers’s latest book, Cat (2006), considers Oriental as well as Western attitudes toward cats: it has been translated into four languages.  “It requires a wealth of knowledge and some ingenuity to write a book about cats that has a fresh approach and provides unusual information,” Juliet Clutton-Brock wrote, “But … this is what Katharine Rogers has achieved in Cat.”  Rogers’s current project is Meet the Invertebrates.