Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography

by Jean Harvey Baker

Overview

"A striking success…the account of the White House years is absorbing, the account of Mary Lincoln's life as a widow utterly compelling." —New York Times

This definitive biography of Mary Todd Lincoln beautifully conveys her tumultuous life and times. A privileged daughter of the proud clan that founded Lexington, Kentucky, Mary fell into a stormy romance with the raw Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln. For twenty-five years the Lincolns forged opposing temperaments into a tolerant, loving marriage. Even as the nation suffered secession and civil war, Mary experienced the tragedies of losing three of her four children and then her husband. An insanity trial orchestrated by her surviving son led to her confinement in an asylum. Mary Todd Lincoln is still often portrayed in one dimension, as the stereotype of the best-hated faults of all women. Here her life is restored for us whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393333039
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/17/2008
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	338,478
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jean Harvey Baker is the author of many books on nineteenth-century American history.  She is a professor of history at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

"This exciting and important book is a major contribution to Lincolniana. Absorbing and convincing, this is one of the few books that deserve to be called definitive."

David Herbert Donald

"Beautifully crafted, entertaining as only the best biographies can be, and rich with superb insights and wonderful anecdotes about nineteenth-century family and domestic life, [this] is a complex and moving character study of a woman tragically out of step with her time and place."

Chicago Tribune