The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President
by Eden Collinsworth
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"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 show more 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 on Wall 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, and the 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 habit and 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. show lessTags
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Fictional Quotes Recycled as History
Eden Collinsworth’s The Improbable Victoria Woodhull offers vivid storytelling, but many of its most striking “quotes” cannot be traced to archives or Woodhull’s own writings. Instead, they appear to be lifted from James Brough’s 1980 novel The Vixens: A Biography of Victoria and Tennessee Claflin, a work that Kirkus Reviews at the time identified as fiction.
Examples include:
• “Amazing child clairvoyants” — not a phrase used in 19th-century newspapers, court testimony, or memoirs. It originates in The Vixens (p. 49).
• “It’s like someone tightening an iron band around my chest” — also verbatim from The Vixens, where it appears as invented dialogue.
• A Buck Claflin show more “quote” in Collinsworth (p. 34) that is remarkably similar to one in Brough (pp. 72–73). It does not come from contemporary sources.
Taken together, these examples show a pattern of fictional dialogue recycled as biography. Today’s Kirkus Reviews describes Collinsworth’s book as “A zesty biography of a colorful woman in the raucous Gilded Age.” By contrast, their 1980 review of The Vixens was blunt: “Appalling — not a biography but a kind of slangy screenplay, based on history but padded with reams of imaginary dialogue that ranges from vulgar to excruciating.”
While Collinsworth’s prose is lively, it misleads readers into thinking they are reading actual quotes from Victoria and her family when they are in fact reading novelistic inventions.
For librarians, teachers, and researchers seeking a reliable, document-based biography, The Improbable Victoria Woodhull is problematic. While Collinsworth did utilize some archives, she completely missed the most important one at SIU in Carbondale. She also is seemingly unaware of the most recent Woodhull scholarship by organizations such as Woodhull Rising. Those wanting a fact-grounded account should instead consult works rooted in primary sources, such as court records, family papers, and contemporary journalism. Collinsworth may be a capable stylist, but she is a poor historian. show less
Eden Collinsworth’s The Improbable Victoria Woodhull offers vivid storytelling, but many of its most striking “quotes” cannot be traced to archives or Woodhull’s own writings. Instead, they appear to be lifted from James Brough’s 1980 novel The Vixens: A Biography of Victoria and Tennessee Claflin, a work that Kirkus Reviews at the time identified as fiction.
Examples include:
• “Amazing child clairvoyants” — not a phrase used in 19th-century newspapers, court testimony, or memoirs. It originates in The Vixens (p. 49).
• “It’s like someone tightening an iron band around my chest” — also verbatim from The Vixens, where it appears as invented dialogue.
• A Buck Claflin show more “quote” in Collinsworth (p. 34) that is remarkably similar to one in Brough (pp. 72–73). It does not come from contemporary sources.
Taken together, these examples show a pattern of fictional dialogue recycled as biography. Today’s Kirkus Reviews describes Collinsworth’s book as “A zesty biography of a colorful woman in the raucous Gilded Age.” By contrast, their 1980 review of The Vixens was blunt: “Appalling — not a biography but a kind of slangy screenplay, based on history but padded with reams of imaginary dialogue that ranges from vulgar to excruciating.”
While Collinsworth’s prose is lively, it misleads readers into thinking they are reading actual quotes from Victoria and her family when they are in fact reading novelistic inventions.
For librarians, teachers, and researchers seeking a reliable, document-based biography, The Improbable Victoria Woodhull is problematic. While Collinsworth did utilize some archives, she completely missed the most important one at SIU in Carbondale. She also is seemingly unaware of the most recent Woodhull scholarship by organizations such as Woodhull Rising. Those wanting a fact-grounded account should instead consult works rooted in primary sources, such as court records, family papers, and contemporary journalism. Collinsworth may be a capable stylist, but she is a poor historian. show less
Read half. Gave up. Just too poorly written and the character is basically a con artist
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