The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox [Hardcover]

Nancy Rubin Stuart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2005

* Nominated for a New York Historical Society Book Prize in American History

 

* Honorable Mention in General Nonfiction from the American Society of Journalists and Authors

 

Here is the first authoritative biography of Margaret Fox, the world-famous medium and cofounder of the Spiritualism movement that swept America in the mid-1800s. In 1848, fifteen-year-old Maggie and her sister Katy created rapping sounds by manipulating their toe joints, practicing until they convinced their parents that their farmhouse was haunted. What started as a prank soon transformed into a movement: By 1853 more than thirty thousand mediums were at work, with Maggie among the most famous. But when she denounced the faith in 1888-appearing before a packed auditorium in her stocking feet to demonstrate-Spiritualism withered almost as quickly as it had bloomed.

Through the memoirs of the Fox sisters, the letters of Maggie's Arctic explorer husband, contemporary newspaper accounts, and other primary sources, Nancy Rubin Stuart creates a vibrant portrait of a Victorian-era woman at the heart of the tumults of her time.

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stuart gives us the first modern biography of Maggie Fox, cofounder of spiritualism. After the two young Fox sisters, Maggie and Katy, claimed they had contacted spirits of the dead in 1848, a large religious movement coalesced around them. But that movement faded when, in 1888, Maggie Fox revealed that the ghostly communication had been a hoax. In this fast-paced biography, we follow Fox through the rise and fall of spiritualism, tracing her travels and lectures, her romance with Arctic explorer Elisha Kane and sister Katy's desperate slide into alcoholism. Stuart argues that, despite its fraudulence, spiritualism left a powerful legacy, influencing Duke University's 1920s studies of ESP, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's work on death and dying and today's interest in all things New Age. Though highly readable and entertaining, this biography leaves several large questions unanswered. Primary sources recording Maggie's own voice are few; readers may wish for more intimacy and a clearer sense of how Fox felt about the remarkable wool she was pulling over America's eyes. Stuart also neglects larger questions of social history: other than a brief excursus on mesmerism, she makes little attempt to explain why spiritualism was so very popular. Because Stuart neither takes us closely into Fox's heart and mind nor paints an especially rich picture of the mid–19th-century American spiritual landscape, this book engages but ultimately fails to satisfy. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Credited with cofounding the Spiritualist movement in mid-nineteenth-century America, Maggie Fox has remained an enduring mystery. In this painstakingly researched biography, Stuart seeks to retrace the rise and fall of this legendary medium. Did Maggie and her sister, Katy, really possess the ability to conjure up spirits, or was their convincing routine of raps and knocks merely a well-rehearsed and extremely lucrative performance greedy family members exploited? Seeking to get to the heart of this question, the author tracks Maggie's evolution from an upstate New York farm girl to an internationally renowned symbol of a quasi-religious movement boasting legions of fervent adherents. Along the way, she fell deeply in love with Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane, who, embarrassed by her dubious vocation, urged her to "quit this life of dreary sameness and suspected deceit." When a world-weary Maggie renounced Spiritualism as a fraud in 1888, then recanted her startling declaration one year later, the cause suffered a blow from which it never recovered. This life story opens an illuminating window on an era and a movement. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1ST edition (February 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151010137
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010134
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #884,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As a nine-year old growing up in suburban Boston, Nancy wrote her first "book" about her mischievous dog and friends. "Being a red-head meant I was teased a lot," Nancy recalls. "I still wonder if that sense of being different impelled me to become a writer because I felt myself an outsider, an observer of others."

While raising her own children two decades later, Nancy became a stringer for the New York Times and won a scholarship to the Breadloaf Writers Conference. Those experiences sparked her first nonfiction book, THE NEW SUBURBAN WOMAN, followed by THE MOTHER MIRROR, ISABELLA OF CASTILE (a Book-of-the Month Featured Dividend) and the best-selling biography of Majorie Merriweather Post,AMERICAN EMPRESS.

Subsequent to writing several award-wining series for television, Nancy published the THE RELUCTANT SPIRITUALIST in 2005, a dramatic story about the origins of American spiritualism.

Her fascination with history led to research about Mercy Otis Warren, America's first female playwright and historian, for which Nancy won a fellowship to the American Antiquarian Society. In 2008 Beacon Press published that work, the award-winning THE MUSE OF THE REVOLUTION which appeared in paperback in 2009.

A seasoned speaker who appeared on C-Span's BookTV in 2008 and 2009, Nancy is writing a new book and serves as the director of the Cape Cod Writers Center Conference. She enjoys spending time with her husband and family, friends, gardening, historical preservation, dancing and the cultural life of Boston and Manhattan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spiritualism and the Victorian Era, July 29, 2005

By 

Benjamin R. Cox, III "RevBen02" (Groveland, Fl United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox (Hardcover)

Firstly, I am a Spiritualist medium, healer, teacher, lecturer and minister. I am currently the Associate Pastor of the Colby Memorial Temple in Cassadaga, Florida. So I admit to coming to this review a bit biased in Maggie's favour.

I gave this book four instead of five stars because I felt it was somewhat unbalanced. And from the other reviews, I feel justified. Ms. Stuart has given us a tremendous picture of life in the last half of the American Victorian Era. There were many issues facing women and Spiritualism got into the middle of many of them. All the reviewers read that Maggie debunked Spiritualism, but none of them seem to read that she recanted that confession and told us why. Also remember that many of the norms and mores of the time got in the way of her life. She was also tremendously effected by her love for Dr. Kane. Has there never been a young girl confused, coming into puberty? I think not.

Anyway, the book is basically well written. I have already used it as a basis for a Lyceum Lecture(Our version of Sunday School). The greatest value of the book is in its exposing readers to a little known period of American history and the involvement of religion in that period. Other good books are:
RADICAL SPIRITS by Anne Braude and TALKING TO THE DEAD, and LILYDALE. Also the truly interested reader would be remiss without reading the HISTORY OF SPIRITUALISM by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (See my review).

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars strong bio of a teen who shammed a nation, March 24, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox (Hardcover)

This is an intriguing biography of Maggie Fox who along with her sister, Katy, started the spiritualist movement that talked with the dead during the middle of the eighteenth century in Hydesville, New York. Nancy Ruben Stuart makes a sound argument that teenage Maggie bored with the small town after living in Rochester created the weird knockings that she and her sibling claimed were deceased people communicating through them. The word of what the Fox sisters could do spread and people came from miles around for a reading. Married sister Leah saw a chance for them to make money and soon a movement spread across the country. However, at nineteen years old Maggie fell in love with Arctic explorer Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who demanded she stopped what he considered a nasty hoax, spiritualism. In her sixties she confessed that spiritualism was a fraud although she continued to give séances.

This biography is fascinating as it provides a deep sense of time and place (upstate New York was a hot bed for cult activities) as well as a powerful look at Maggie and her family. The author contends that spiritualism still has a hold on people in the twenty-first century with New Age movements like the psychic hotline. Readers will appreciate this strong glimpse at a teen who shammed a nation.

Harriet Klausner

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb History of Women and the Genesis of Spiritualism, March 8, 2005

By 

Stuart Ellison "Author" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox (Hardcover)

The Reluctant Spiritualist is non-fiction but reads like a fast-paced whodunit. The mystery is whether spiritualism is a fact, or a fraud cooked up by two bored teenage girls in a farmhouse in mid-nineteenth century upstate New York.

Drawing extensively on diaries, correspondence, and literature of the times, Nancy Rubin Stuart paints a vivid portrait of the meteoric rise and tragic downfall of Maggie and Katy Fox, women who gave birth to the modern spiritualist movement. It all began when the sisters learned to dislocate the joints of their big toes to produce "rapping" sounds in order to frighten their high-strung mother. Over the years, Maggie and Katy become so popular that they hold seances for world leaders.

Much of what Ms. Stuart documents is clearly fraud, but other instances of the sisters' powers, and that of other, mostly female "mediums", are inexplicable. Politicians and celebrites who were skeptics become converts, even while many crusade to expose trickery in the business.

This was one of the few occupations where Victorian women influenced society in large numbers, and Ms. Stuart does a good job of exploring spiritualism's sexual overtones. Many famous gentlemen attended seances held by Maggie and Katy because they were attracted to them. One humorous incident involved a bunch of drunken U.S. senators in a hotel room with the two young women. Things haven't changed much in the last 150 years!

Against this backdrop is a poignant, star-crossed love story involving Maggie and the great Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. Kane is a firm non-believer who gets Maggie to give up rapping, at least for a while.

To the end, Ms. Stuart takes no position on the validity of spiritualism, presenting extensive evidence, pro and con, down to our own time. Some critics have said that the author's even-handedness detracts from her work. I consider her impartiality a strength. It is best to let the reader make up his or her own mind about a subject that defies empirical proof. The Reluctant Spiritualist is an important book that raises hard questions about the immortality of the soul.