| International Standard Book Number |
9780385549578 (hardcover)
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| International Standard Book Number |
0385549571 (hardcover)
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| Personal Name |
Collinsworth, Eden, author.
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| Title Statement |
The improbable Victoria Woodhull : suffrage, free love, and the first woman to run for president / Eden Collinsworth.
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| Edition Statement |
First edition.
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| Imprint |
New York : Doubleday, 2025
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| Physical Description |
pages cm.
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| Bibliography, Etc. Note |
Includes bibliographical references.
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| Summary, Etc. |
"From the acclaimed author of What the Ermine Saw and Behaving Badly, a portrait of Victoria Woodhull, a celebrated and maligned 19th century businesswoman and activist and a leader in the fight for women's suffrage and labor reforms. In 1894, a remarkably self-possessed American woman, with no formal education to speak of, stood before a British court seeking damages for libel from the trustees of the British Museum. It was yet another stop along the unpredictable route that was Victoria Woodhull's life.Born dirt-poor in an obscure Ohio settlement, Woodhull was the daughter of an illiterate mother entranced by the fad of Mesmerism-a therapeutic pseudoscience-and a swindler father whose cons exploited his two daughters. It was through her mother, though,that Woodhull familiarized herself with the supernatural realm, earning a degree of fame as a clairvoyant and her first taste of financial success. Woodhull's life would continue to turn on its axis and then turn again. Despite a deeply troubled first marriage at the age of fourteen, countless attempts by the press to discredit her, and a wrongful jail sentence, Woodhull thrived through sheer determination and the strength of her bond with her sister Tennie. She co-founded a successful stock brokerage onWall Street, launched a newspaper, and became the first woman to run for president. Hers was a rags to riches story that saw her cross paths with Karl Marx, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frederick Douglass. In an era when women's rights were circumscribed, andthe idea of leaving a marriage was taboo, she broke the rules to carve out a path of her own. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Collinsworth tells the story of a woman truly ahead of her time-a radical visionary who made defying mores a habitand brought to the fore societal and political issues still being addressed. Neither a saint nor a villain, Woodhull emerges as an iconic, complex woman: an entrepreneur; lover of freedom; and a fiercely loyal family member whose political activism and suffragist legacy will cement her in history"-- Provided by publisher.
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| Subject-Personal Name |
Woodhull, Victoria C. (Victoria Claflin), 1838-1927.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Women Suffrage United States History.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Women social reformers United States Biography.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Suffragists United States Biography.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Free love United States History 19th century.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
United States Social conditions 1865-1918.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Biographies
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