Notorious Victoria

January 26, 1998
One of the most controversial American women of the late 19th century, Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) springs to life in this study that leaves no stone unturned. Gabriel, an editor with the Reuters News Service, quotes extensively from her subject's articles, speeches and letters, and has researched the newspapers of the period. Victoria and her flamboyant sister, Tennie, worked as spiritualists but then attracted attention by opening a successful Wall Street brokerage house. According to the author, Victoria's unhappy marriage to an alcoholic changed her into a radical advocate for women's rights who spoke out in public and published feminist articles in a newspaper she began. Her support of free love, divorce and workers' rights earned her the enmity of the establishment and led to conflicts with leading suffragettes. In 1870, she became the first woman to run for president--a campaign that was interrupted when she was sent to jail for discussing in print renowned minister Henry Ward Beecher's alleged love affair. Victoria spent her later years in England after marrying a wealthy Britisher. Photos.

November 15, 1997
Journalist Gabriel wonders why popular historical accounts of the suffrage movement minimize the role of Woodhull, the tireless, bold, flamboyant, and controversial 19th-century advocate of women's equality. Gabriel covers the familiar: Woodhull as the first woman stockbroker and presidential candidate; first woman to address Congress; as well as Woodhull's spiritualist healing practice, the men in her life, her political radicalism and association with Karl Marx's First International, her free-love philosophy and imprisonment for publishing information on sexuality. Gabriel details Woodhull's efforts to practice her belief that women are truly free when they achieve the right to self-ownership. Gabriel feels that Woodhull's disregard of 19th-century sexual and social morality was the reason for being disowned and vilified by the suffrage movement. Gabriel's flowing narrative is a sympathetic biography of a person who seemed to live before her times. Recommended for academic and research libraries.--Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College

March 1, 1998
YA-A fine biography of a little-known 19th-century suffragette. Woodhull's achievements read like fiction, especially considering her times. Born into poverty in 1837 to a family largely unconcerned with nuances of the law, she showed great promise early on. Taking advantage of the contemporary enchantment with spiritualism, she and her sister worked as clairvoyants while teenagers. Married at age 15 to an alcoholic and soon the mother of a retarded child, she worked on the stage until summoned home by her sister. The pair traveled as spiritual healers for several years until guided to New York by Victoria's second husband, James Blood, a progressive idealist who encouraged his wife's interest in women's rights. In New York she and her sister procured a patron, millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt, and established a brokerage firm and a newspaper to voice their liberal views. Both succeeded, testifying to Woodhull's capability, credibility, and vision. She ran for President of the U.S and espoused the fledgling Communist cause. She was a promoter of free love, to the horror of the nation. When it was revealed that she lived with her husband, ex-husband, and lover at the same time, she was widely reviled, financially ruined, jailed on trumped-up charges, and hounded out of the country. Young adults will enjoy her story, and marvel at 19th-century morals. A highly readable addition to biography and women's rights shelves.-Catherine Noonan, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

January 1, 1998
Victoria Claflin Woodhull Blood Martin (1838^-1927), the "most notorious and polarizing woman of her day," was spiritualist, suffrage leader, stockbroker, publisher/editor, 1872 Equal Rights Party presidential candidate (with Frederick Douglass as running mate), eloquent supporter of free love and socialism, participant in several court battles arising from prominent Protestant minister Henry Ward Beecher's adultery scandal, and in later years, vocal advocate of eugenics. In this new biography, Gabriel, a Reuters News Service writer/editor, recounts Woodhull's life, covering her unique achievements and the bitter personal attacks on her by those who found her ideas and behavior scandalous or threatening to the status quo. Woodhull is not a "simple" hero: her essays and speeches often sound quite modern, yet she shifted her most radical positions when she sought respectability in midlife, and some of her income's sources were less than edifying. "Notorious Victoria" is a satisfying, well-researched life of a complex and fascinating woman. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)