Traces the life of the venerated Southern writer from her Mississippi childhood to the present and discusses its relationship to her work

An intimate portrait of the founder of the Christian Science Church explores the life of Mary Baker Eddy within the context of her late-Victorian world and the experiences of illness and loss that led to her attempts to alleviate suffering. Tour.

Born in 1940, Lillian Faderman was the only child of an uneducated and unmarried immigrant Jewish woman. Her mother, whose family perished in the Holocaust, was racked by guilt at having come to America and left them behind; she suffered recurrent psychotic episodes. Her only escape from the brutal labor of her sweatshop job was her fiercely loved daughter, Lilly, whose poignant dream throughout an impoverished childhood was to become a movie star and "rescue" her mother. Lilly grew up to become Lil, outwardly tough, inwardly innocent, hungry for love and success. A beautiful young woman who was learning that her deepest erotic and emotional connections were to women, she found herself in a dangerous but seductive lesbian underworld of addicts, pimps, and prostitutes. Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful and to redeem her mother's suffering, she entered the University of California at Berkeley and worked her way through college as a burlesque stripper. A brilliant student, she ultimately achieved a Ph.D. At last she became Lillian, the woman who in time became a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer, and a charismatic, groundbreaking scholar of gay and lesbian studies. Told with wrenching immediacy and great power, this is an extraordinary memoir: the nakedly honest -- and very American -- story of an exceptional woman and her remarkable, unorthodox life.

Though her work is a staple of anthologies of American poetry, Anne Bradstreet has never before been the subject of an accessible, full-scale biography for a general audience. Anne Bradstreet is known for her poem, "To My Dear and Loving Husband," among others, and through John Berryman's "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet." With her first collection, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, she became the first published poet, male or female, of the New World. Many New England towns were founded and settled by Anne Bradstreet's family or their close associates--characters who appear in these pages.

A major new biography of the politically powerful forerunner of Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton. Deeply researched and richly told, Florence Harding reveals the never-before-told story of First Lady Florence Harding's phenomenal rise to power. The daughter of an abusive father in small-town Ohio, mother at a young age to an illegitimate child, Florence Harding saw her escape in Warren Harding, and became the driving force behind his ascent to one of the most scandal-ridden presidencies in United States history.Preeminent First Ladies biographer Carl Sferrazza Anthony not only captures the drama of Florence Harding's personality, but he uses the White House to bring to life Jazz Age America -- a world of speakeasies and Miss America, Babe Ruth, Al Jolson, and the rise of Hollywood. He shows how Florence's friendship with Evalyn McLean, the morphine-addicted owner of the Hope Diamond and The Washington Post was one of the defining bonds in her public life. With newly unsealed medical information, Florence Harding finally unfolds the mystery of whether the First Lady poisoned the President, whose death occurred seventy-five years ago. Florence Harding is a fascinating and informative look at a lost chapter in American history.

In She Always Knew How, her wonderful new biography of legendary actress Mae West, acclaimed biographer Charlotte Chandler draws on a series of interviews she conducted with the star just months before her death in 1980. From their first meeting, where West held out a diamond-covered hand in greeting and lamented her interviewer's lack of jewels, to their farewell, where the star was still gamely offering advice on how to attract men, Mae West and Charlotte Chandler developed a warm rapport that glows on every page of this biography. Actress, playwright, screenwriter, and iconic sex symbol Mae West was born in New York in 1893. She created a scandal -- and a sensation -- on Broadway with her play Sex in 1926. Convicted of obscenity, she was sentenced to ten days in prison. She went to jail a convict and emerged a star. Her next play, Diamond Lil, was a smash, and she would play the role of Diamond Lil in different variations for virtually her entire film career. In Hollywood she played opposite George Raft, Cary Grant (in one of his first starring roles), and W. C. Fields, among others. She was the number one box-office attraction during the 1930s and saved Paramount Studios from bankruptcy. Her films included some notorious one-liners -- which she wrote herself -- that have become part of Hollywood lore: from "too much of a good thing can be wonderful" to "When I'm good, I'm very good. When I'm bad, I'm better." Her risqué remarks got her banned from radio for a dozen years, but behind the clever quips was Mae's deep desire, decades before the word "feminism" was in the news, to see women treated equally with men. She saw through the double standard of the time that permitted men to do things that women would be ruined for doing. Her cause was sexual equality, and she was shrewd enough to know that it was perhaps the ultimate battleground, the most difficult cause of all. In addition to her extensive interviews of Mae West, Chandler also spoke with actors and directors who worked with and knew the star, the man with whom she lived for the last twenty-seven years of her life, as well as her closest assistant at the end of her life. Their comments and insights enrich this fascinating book. She Always Knew How captures the voice and spirit of this unique actress as no other biography ever has.

Rosa Raisa (1893-1963) was legendary for her imposing, powerful, and wide-ranging voice as well as for her highly dramatic and emotionally stirring stage presence. A renowned star of the Chicago Opera, Raisa sang over 1,000 opera performances and concerts around the world. Held in high esteem by composers, conductors, and colleagues, she was Puccini's choice to create the lead roles in La rondine and Turandot. In this first biography of Raisa, Charles Mintzer provides a captivating and revealing portrait of a warm-hearted, generous artist whose career and complex personality were shaped by a life that crossed Jewish, Italian, and American cultural boundaries. Mintzer masterfully blends together his narrative with selections from Raisa's unpublished memoir and excerpts from contemporary critical reviews to present a well-rounded picture of this extraordinary woman and to trace her incredible journey to operatic fame. Born Raitza Burchstein in the Polish ghetto of Bialystok, she fled the 1906 pogroms and settled in Italy, where she studied under Barbara Marchisio at the Conservatory of Naples. After her operatic debut in 1913 as Leonora in Oberto during the Verdi centenary celebrations at Parma, she immediately joined Cleofonte Campanini's Chicago Opera and, renamed Rosa Raisa, achieved instant acclaim. Mintzer recounts her great successes in Chicago and on the company's national tours, as well as several seasons in South America, Mexico, and Italy. He discusses Raisa's most famous roles, describes the La Scala premiere of Turandot with Arturo Toscanini conducting, and offers fresh insights into her controversial Berlin engagement in a Tosca performance with Adolf Hitler in the audience. Mintzer also chronicles her marriage to baritone Giacomo Rimini, her illnesses and miscarriages, her financial collapse, her lifelong commitment to Jewish organizations and causes, and her puzzling burial in a Catholic cemetery. Lavishly illustrated with over fifty photographs, many of them previously unpublished, the book includes an authoritative chronology of all of Raisa's performances, her concert repertoire, and an annotated discography.

"Fanny`s sister Adelaide, five years her junior, ranks among the finest of English-born opera singers. Making her debut in Venice in the exacting role of Norma - and singing nothing but a leading role thereafter - she won acclaim across Italy and at two brilliant seasons at London's Covent Garden before marrying the rich Edward Sartoris. The real love of her life, however, was Count Francis Thun, son of one of the great families of the Austrian Empire. Her love for Francis hovered over her marriage like a cloud." "Fanny never quite forgave Adelaide her success. As Fanny's own marriage disintegrated, her jealousy surged, and her biased appraisals of her sister's singing have unfairly tarnished Adelaide's opera reputation. In many ways, however, as Ms. Blainey shows, the sisters loved each other fiercely. Their complex and fascinating relationship is one of the major themes of this grand biography, based on extensive research and exclusive access to hundreds of family letters."--BOOK JACKET.

Het levensverhaal van de voormalige drank- en drugsgebruiker, oprichter van een privékliniek voor verslaafden in Amsterdam.

"Lindbergh could hardly have found a more generous biographer."-The Los Angeles Times Book Review.

"This beautifully crafted book is a landmark in literary and cultural studies. Kate Phillips brings together in this definitive life of Helen Hunt Jackson a variety of challenging issues-feminism, literary history, psychology, social history, biography, intellectual history, anthropology-and the result is a brilliant contribution to the entire field of American studies. "Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life" will have a broad and lasting impact on our understanding of American culture."--Sacvan Bercovitch, Powell M. Cabot Research Professor of American Literature, Harvard University

The story of Ruth Barnett, who performed more than forty thousand abortions between 1918 and 1968 without losing a single patient, reveals how the antiabortion laws benefitted racketeers, syndicates, politicians, and the press, reestablished state control of women's bodies, and victimized women.

A historian presents the first full-length biography of the black woman crusader for racial justice and women's rights in the period after Reconstruction, detailing her efforts to eliminate lynching and her complicated relationship with the feminists of the time. UP.

The ideals of the French Revolution inflamed a longing for liberty and equality within courageous, freethinking women of the era—women who played vital roles in the momentous events that reshaped their nation and the world. In Liberty, Lucy Moore paints a vivid portrait of six extraordinary Frenchwomen from vastly different social and economic backgrounds who helped stoke the fervor and idealism of those years, and who risked everything to make their mark on history. Germaine de Staël was a wealthy, passionate Parisian intellectual—as consumed by love affairs as she was by politics—who helped write the 1791 Constitution. Théroigne de Méricourt was an unhappy courtesan who fell in love with revolutionary ideals. Exuberant, decadent Thérésia Tallien was a ruthless manipulator instrumental in engineering Robespierre's downfall. Their stories and others provide a fascinating new perspective on one of history's most turbulent epochs.

Born in 1911 in the illustrious Sarabhai family of Ahmedabad, Mridula came under the spell of Gandhi and left her palatial home to hoin the Salt Satyagraha. She was involved not only in the freedom struggle but also in the fight for women's equality, for the individual's right in dissent, and for the rights of minorities. This biography represents a page from the social and political history of modern India, over half a century seen through the life of one person.