The Mary Baker Eddy Library, home of the ever-popular Mapparium giant globe exhibit, is adding a new historical biography by Cindy Safronoff to its collection — Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage (This One Thing, July 4, 2015).

This nonfiction drama that sets Mary Baker Eddy’s statements on marriage into historical context has a new home in the Research and Reference Section alongside well-known classics relating to Mary Baker Eddy’s life work, including:

The Story of Christian Science Wartime Activities
The Ultimate Freedom, by John H. Wyndham
Hazel Buck Ewing, by Karen Griep Heilbrun
As the Sowing, by Edwin S. Leonard
Education at the Principia, by Mary Kimball Morgan

The Research and Reference Services room is on the fourth floor of the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity in the Christian Science Publishing Society building at 200 Massachusetts Ave in Boston. Manuscripts, letters, personal papers, photographs, and sermons of Mary Baker Eddy are available there too, along with reminiscences from people who knew her personally and other primary sources available for in-depth study of the life and work of Eddy, who was a pioneer in the fields of religion, business, education, and publishing.

The new Crossing Swords biography focuses on Eddy’s views on marriage and how they fit within the historical context of the early women’s rights movement. Eddy’s life, career, and views on marriage are compared and contrasted with those of Victoria Woodhull, whose United States Presidential campaign was in the national news while Eddy was writing the first edition of her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Woodhull was best know for her political platform that included a call to abolish legal marriage — a goal of the “free-love” movement. By exploring the American civil dialogue and cultural trends in the early 1870s, Crossing Swords provides new insights into Eddy’s chapters “Marriage” and “Christian Science versus Spiritualism.”

Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Safronoff is available for purchase on Amazon, or by special order from most local bookstores.

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