02830cam a2200361 i 4500 2426072401 TxAuBib 20250915120000.0 250408s2025||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2024050274 9780385549578 HRD 30.00 0385549571 HRD 30.00 TxAuBib rda Collinsworth, Eden, author. The improbable Victoria Woodhull [BOOK] : suffrage, free love, and the first woman to run for president / Eden Collinsworth. Suffrage, free love, and the first woman to run for president. First Doubleday hardcover edition. New York : Doubleday, [2025] xv, 277 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references. "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 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.". 20250915. Woodhull, Victoria C Victoria Claflin 1838-1927. Women Suffrage United States History. Free love United States History 19th century. Women social reformers United States Biography. Suffragists United States Biography. United States Social conditions 1865-1918. Biographies.