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The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science

The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science
book cover
The 1993 University of Nebraska Press cover
Author
GenreBiography, history
Publisher
Publication placeUnited States
Pages566 (first edition)
ISBN0-8032-6349-X
OCLC150493
WebsiteText available at the Internet Archive

The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909) is a highly critical account of the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and the early history of the Christian Science church in 19th-century New England. It was published as a book in November 1909 in New York by Doubleday, Page & Company.[1][2] The original byline was that of a journalist, Georgine Milmine, but a 1993 printing of the book declared that novelist Willa Cather was the principal author; however, this assessment has been questioned by more recent scholarship which again identifies Milmine as the primary author, although Cather and others did significant editing.[3] Cather herself usually wrote that she did nothing more than standard copy-editing,[4] but sometimes that she was the primary author.[5]

One of the first major examinations of Eddy's life and work, along with Sibyl Wilbur's articles in Human Life magazine, the material initially appeared in McClure's magazine in 14 installments between January 1907 and June 1908,[6] when Eddy was 85 years old, preceded in December 1906 by a six-page editorial in which McClure's announced the series as "probably as near absolute accuracy as history ever gets".[7] In the early 20th century, Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in America,[8] and in the view of McClure's, Eddy was the most powerful woman in the country.[9] The McClure's eyewitness accounts and affidavits became key primary sources for many accounts of Eddy and the church's early history.[10][4]

The magazine's publisher and editor-in-chief, S. S. McClure, assigned three writers to work on the articles in addition to Cather and Milmine: William Henry Irwin, McClure's managing editor; and staff writers Burton J. Hendrick and Mark Sullivan. Briefly, the famed journalist Ida Tarbell was assigned to the project but left the magazine before it started.[11] The 1909 book was republished by Baker Book House in 1971 after its copyright had expired, and again in 1993 by the University of Nebraska Press, this time naming both Cather and Milmine as authors. David Stouck, in his introduction to the University of Nebraska Press edition, wrote that Cather's portrayal of Eddy "contains some of the finest portrait sketches and reflections on human nature that Willa Cather would ever write".[12]

A review in The New York Times wrote in 1910 that the book's evidence against "Eddyism" was "unanswerable and conclusive".[13] However, more recent scholarship has questioned the accuracy and trustworthiness of the series and book.[14][15][16][17] In 2017, scholar L. Ashley Squires wrote: "Christian Science remains poorly understood by the broader scholarly community and the public as a whole. One need only look to the frustratingly enduring usage of the 1907 McClure’s biography as an authoritative source ... for evidence of scholarly ignorance."[17]

  1. ^ Bohlke 1982, 288–294.
  2. ^ Jewell and Stout 2014, 97.
  3. ^ Squires 2013, 328–348.
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Gill1998p567 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bohkle1982p292 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Milmine 1907–1908.
  7. ^ McClure's, December 1906, 216.
  8. ^ Stark 1998, 190.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference editorialp211 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gardner1983p41 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Gill 1998, 565; more in Sergeant 1953, 54–56, and Lyon 1963, 299.
  12. ^ Stouck 1993a, xviii.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT26Feb2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Knee1994p125 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Gill 1998, 39, 563-568, and throughout.
  16. ^ Gottschalk 2005, Kindle Edition.
  17. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Squires was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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