Free Woman [Hardcover]

Marion Meade (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1976

A biography of the spiritualist, stock broker, publisher, lecturer, advocate of women's rights, and Presidential candidate who shocked nineteenth-century America with her revolutionary ideas and behavior.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A century later, Victoria Woodhull has a great deal to teach us." -- Frances Tarlton Farenthold, Attorney-At-Law --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

A biographer and novelist, Marion Meade is the author of nine books, including The Unruly Life of Woody Allen, Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth, Sybille, Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, and Bitching. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 174 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (January 12, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394830350
• ISBN-13: 978-0394830353
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,305,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marion Meade is a biographer and novelist.
Her most recent biography is Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. Other subjects include Eleanor of Aquitaine, Madame Blavatsky, Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, and Woody Allen. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties tells the story of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber becoming writers in the Jazz Age.
She has also written two novels set in medieval France, Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard and Sybille.
Aside from her writing, she edited Dorothy Parker's collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker; Parker's play The Ladies of the Corridor; and introduced Parker's Complete Poems.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not the Woodhull Biography You Want To Read, May 20, 2011

By 

Marc Demarest "Marc Demarest" (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Free Woman: The Life and Times of Victoria Woodhull (Kindle Edition)

This book, if I understand the introduction properly, is a reworked version of a "young adult" biography, republished as a Kindle book. Don't let the fact that it is the only Kindle'd biography of Woodhull available tempt you into buying this book; it will annoy the specialist reader, and the generalist reader will come away from the book with a distorted view of Woodhull's views and her life.

The author presents a filtered and partial view of Woodhull, minimizing her involvement in the free love, Spiritualist and early socialist/communist movements, and leaving out her significant efforts as an apologist for eugenics entirely -- possibly in the name of sanitizing Woodhull for presentation as a strong precursor to modern feminist readers. Unfortunately, not only does this filtering strip away the origins of many of Woodhull's positions, and create awkward moments in the text, but it reduces a rich, complex and important figure in several important nineteenth century cultural movements to a cardboard cutout.

Specialists will be completely put off by the fictionalizing in the text, of which there is a great deal. While it is possible -- for example -- that documentary records of conversations between Woodhull and Colonel Blood, during the early days of their courtship, exist, allowing us to know *precisely* what they said to one another during a particular moonlit walk, I doubt it.

The author's demonstrated understanding of nineteenth century American culture is -- despite the "life and times" billing of the title -- is shallow, almost cartoonishly so at times. There is a very partial "life", and virtually no "times" in this book.

Definitely not worth ten bucks. The Wikipedia entry on Woodhull will provide an equal number of facts, with fewer distortions, and less effort required.