Emmeline B. Wells: An Intimate History

by Carol Cornwall Madsen

Overview

Emmeline B. Wells was the most noted Utah Mormon woman of her time. Lauded nationally for her energetic support of the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century, she was a self-made woman who channeled her lifelong sense of destiny into ambitious altruism. Her public acclaim and activism belied the introspective, self-appraising, and emotional persona she expressed in the pages of her forty-seven extant diaries. Yet she wrote, “I have risen triumphant,” after reconciling herself to the heartaches of plural marriage, and she pursued a self-directed life in earnest.
     This new biography tells the story of the private Emmeline. The unusual circumstances of her marriages, the complicated lives of her five daughters, losses and disappointments interspersed with bright moments and achievements, all engendered the idea that her life was a romance, with all the mysterious, tragic, and sentimental elements of that genre. Her responses to that perception made it so. This volume, drawing heavily on Emmeline Wells’s own words, tells the complicated story of a woman of ambition, strength, tenderness, and faith. 

Winner of the Mormon History Association's Best Biography Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607815235
Publisher:	University of Utah Press
Publication date:	06/01/2017
Pages:	570
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 10.70(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Carol Cornwall Madsen is professor emeritus of history at Brigham Young University, a past president of the Mormon History Association, and former vice-chair of the Board of Utah State History. She is an award-winning author and her books include In Their Own Words: Women and the Story of Nauvoo and A Woman’s Advocate, The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells, 1870-1920, which won three best book awards. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

To the Reader xi

1 A New England Heritage (1828-1832) 3

2 A New England Childhood (1828-1844) 15

3 A Trying Ordeal (1842-1844) 28

4 Great Expectations (1844-1845) 40

5 Changing Directions (1844-1845) 55

6 Nauvoo (1844-1846) 65

7 Winter Quarters (1846-1848) 74

8 The Nascent Westerner (1848-1852) 88

9 Becoming a Wells (1852) 100

10 The Wells Family (1852-1870) 110

11 The Emerging Journalist (1870s) 126

12 Recompense (1874-1875) 138

13 A Local Luminary (1875-1876) 146

14 Successes and Sorrows (1877-1878) 162

15 Wells Goes to Washington (1878-1879) 177

16 Moving On (1881-1885) 193

17 A Return to Her Roots (1885-1886) 206

18 A Failed Effort (1886) 217

19 A Family Affair (1886) 230

20 Sequel (1887) 243

21 Aftermath (1887-1888) 259

22 Changes and Challenges (1887-1888) 272

23 New Thresholds of Change (1888-1890) 284

24 A Leading Sister (1890-1892) 295

25 Dead Sea Apples (1889-1891) 304

26 Expanding Horizons (1891-1893) 319

27 The Lure of Utah Politics (1894-1895) 335

28 Partisan Politics (1895-1897) 348

29 A Book of Her Own (1896-1898) 364

30 An Innocent Abroad (1899) 379

31 The New Century (1900-1901) 391

32 A New Generation (1901-1904) 401

33 No Rest for the Weary (1905-1908) 418

34 The Elect Lady (1908-1911) 429

35 End of an Era (1911-1914) 445

36 Winding Down (1915-1918) 464

37 The True Light (1919-1921) 482

Appendix: The Family of Emmeline B. Wells 503

Bibliography 507

Index 529

Editorial Reviews

Madsen’s absorbing biography is meticulously researched and elegantly composed. No Mormon studies education is complete without this book.”
—Kate Holbrook, specialist in Women’s History, LDS Church History Department, and coeditor of Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives 

“Carol Madsen, having previously dealt with Emmeline Wells’ public life, now ably explores her interior landscape, tracing the contrast between her public triumph and her private pain, from her ‘wild and fanciful’ youth to her unexpected humiliations. Wells’ excellent record-keeping habit enables the rich detail of her story. This extended and sympathetic inner biography of the best known Mormon woman of her time is told largely in her own words, linked by Madsen’s steady and judicious narrative.”
—Claudia L. Bushman, author of Contemporary Mormonism

“A significant contribution to women’s history, Utah history, and LDS history that will also appeal to the general reader.”
—Kathryn L. McKay, professor of history, Weber State University

“Emmeline B. Wells is an admirable and engaging work of historical research and imagination. It offers a compelling portrait of an ambitious, loving, often unhappy but always striving human being, and as it does so it offers readers also a refreshing new perspective on domestic and political possibilities in the nineteenth century.”
—Mormon Studies Review  


"A thorough and engaging biography of Emmeline Wells’s private life. Massive amounts of careful research create a three-dimensional picture of Mormon society from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City as Emmeline moved through it, as well as the late 19th- and early 20th-century American suffrage and national political circles she became part of.  The biography is as readable as a good novel and even more engaging because the story it tells is of a real woman whose extraordinary achievements were made despite personal tragedies that would have defeated someone less hopeful and resilient."
—Susan Elizabeth Howe, poet and retired professor of English, Brigham Young University 


“Despite the daunting physical presence of the book, its prose and short chapter structure makes it accessible for a broad audience. . . . The intimate biography is important because it recognizes the multiple ways we can know this woman who is famous for her remarkable public achievements. Readers not only see someone who writes, leads, and organizes. We see someone who feels.”
—Juvenile Instructor


“Few historians have written as well or as much on Mormon history as author Carol Madsen, and in this work she does not disappoint in the least. Required reading for anyone associated with Mormon studies as well as researchers studying 19th century American religion more generally or women’s history, and certainly recommended for anyone who enjoys a good biography."
—Association for Mormon Letters


“This attractively designed book is a moving and well-told introduction to an unforgettable woman.”
—Western Historical Quarterly


“Every chapter, every page invites the reader into the thinking and the social world of Emmeline and her contemporaries. … This era of female writers and defenders of the faith, of innovators and preservers of tradition, and of socially alert women in times of transition will undoubtedly be better understood and valued because of Carol Madsen’s notable achievement.”—BYU Studies Quarterly

From the Publisher