The improbable Victoria Woodhull Suffrage, free love, and the first woman to run for president

Essayist Collinsworth follows up What the Ermine Saw with a beguiling biography of Victoria Woodhull (1838--1927), a groundbreaking and enigmatic figure in women's history. After opening with Woodhull's 1893 libel case against a British Museum Library archivist, Mr. Garnett, for "cataloging... material she insisted contained unflattering references to her," Collinsworth rewinds to Woodhull's humble beginnings, when she worked with her sister for their con artist father as "amazing child clairvoyants"--a trade they continued as adults, serving as spiritual consultants to Cornelius Vanderbilt. With Vanderbilt's backing, the sisters opened a Wall Street brokerage firm (at a time when women weren't allowed to trade stocks) and founded their own newspaper; Woodhull eventually ran for president (at a time when women couldn't vote). Much of the book follows Woodhull's ambitious trajectory through the eyes of Mr. Garnett, whom Collinsworth places in the role of researcher, studying the woman who sued him--a distracting and unnecessary conceit. Still, Collinsworth's Woodhull is captivating enough that this misstep is worth overlooking--the author excels at conveying the chameleon-like nature of a woman who was "in the business of reinventing her past," including through numerous self-published pamphlets (one so effusive that a critic remarked, "Such a book is a tomb from which no author again rises"). It's a transfixing character study. (Sept.)

Novelist and biographer Collinsworth (What the Ermine Saw) offers the rags-to-riches story of Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838--1927), a women's-rights pioneer who led a fascinating and highly accomplished life. Named after Queen Victoria, she was born in Homer, OH, to a poor family; her first home was a small wooden shack. She went on to marry three times and had two children with her first husband, a philanderer with alcohol-use disorder whom she wed when she was only 14 years old. Raised in the spiritualist tradition, Woodhull established herself as something of a clairvoyant and made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange by using this reputation to advise clients such as Cornelius Vanderbilt. She and her sister, Tennessee, were the first women to found and operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. But perhaps Woodhull's most significant achievement was running for U.S. president on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872. Collinsworth also tells how Woodhull crossed paths with Karl Marx, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frederick Douglass, all the while breaking societal rules that circumscribed women's roles. VERDICT A highly recommended, well-researched biography that brings Woodhull and her achievements to life.--Lucy Heckman

The eventful life of a maverick. Publisher, world traveler, and communications consultant Collinsworth takes on the notorious Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927), spiritualist, suffragist, free love advocate, and daring iconoclast. Born into poverty, she was the daughter of grifters--Collinsworth calls her father a "one-man crime spree"--who exploited Victoria and her younger sister, Tennie, promoting them as "Amazing Child Clairvoyants." At 14, she married a man twice her age, who turned out to be an alcoholic and morphine addict, and left him for another man who abetted her own scams. Claiming to have had a vision that she would become wealthy, famous, and the ruler of people, she ended up in New York, where she set up the Magnetic Healing Institute & Conservatory of Mental and Spiritual Science. Among her clients was Cornelius Vanderbilt, who paid her to predict stock market trends--tips, unbeknownst to Vanderbilt, that came from his eldest son. The grateful Vanderbilt agreed to back her when she and Tennie decided to open their own brokerage firm--the first founded by women. Other firsts followed: Victoria was the first woman to testify before Congress, on the matter of women's suffrage, and, in 1872, the first to run for president. She touted her causes--suffrage and free love--in a newspaper column, "The Petticoat Politician," and a weekly newspaper she and her sister published. Early admirers included Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, and newspaperman Horace Greeley. But Victoria's notoriety and arrogance undid her: She "hunted trouble and didn't care where her foot landed," Collinsworth notes succinctly. Anthony Comstock had her arrested twice. Mired in scandal, in 1877, she sailed for England, where, with stubborn determination, she reinvented herself. A zesty biography of a colorful woman in the raucous Gilded Age. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.