| Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal Contributor(s): Fox, Richard Wightman (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226259382 ISBN-13: 9780226259383 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $29.70 Product Type: Hardcover Published: November 1999 Annotation: The story of a scandal that shook American culture to the core in the 1870s when a famous writer sued his best friend--the nation's leading minister--for seducing his wife. 56 halftones. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 19th Century - Religion | History - Biography & Autobiography |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 99022120 |
| Physical Information: 1.13" H x 6.17" W x 9.23" (1.70 lbs) 426 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The nation's leading minister stands accused of adultery. He vehemently denies the charge but confesses to being on the ragged edge of despair. His alleged lover is a woman of mystical faith, nearly Catholic in her piety. Her husband, a famous writer, sues the minister for damages. A six-month trial ends inconclusively, but it holds the nation in thrall. It produces gripping drama, scathing cartoons, and soul-searching editorials. Trials of Intimacy is the story of a scandal that shook American culture to the core in the 1870s because the key players were such vaunted moral leaders. In that respect there has never been another case like it--except The Scarlet Letter, to which it was constantly compared. Henry Ward Beecher was pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church and for many the representative man of mid-nineteenth century America. Elizabeth Tilton was the wife of Beecher's longtime intimate friend Theodore. His accusation of criminal conversation between Henry and Elizabeth confronted the American public with entirely new dilemmas about religion and intimacy, privacy and publicity, reputation and celebrity. The scandal spotlighted a series of comic and tragic loves and betrayals among these three figures, with a supporting cast that included Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. To readers at the time, the Beecher-Tilton Scandal was an irresistible mystery. Richard Fox puts his readers into that same reverberating story, while offering it as a timeless tale of love, deception, faith, and the confounding indeterminacy of truth. Trials of Intimacy revises our conception of nineteenth-century morals and passions. And it is an American history richly resonant with present-day dramas. |