Victoria Woodhull is an historical figure too often ignored and undervalued by historians. Although she never achieved political power, her actions and her presence on the political scene helped begin to change the way Americans thought about the right to vote, particularly women's suffrage and she set the stage for political emancipations to come throughout the 20th Century.Woodhull was a product of and a revolutionary within the socially conservative Victorian era which predominated in the United States as much as it did in England. She was an anomaly within her era, an unlikely and unconventional woman. She came from a background of poverty and her careers prior to entering politics included fortune-telling, acting, being a stock broker, journalism and lecturing on women's rights. She ran for President of the United States in 1872. At that time, she had twice been divorced and she outraged even the feminists of her day by refusing to confine her campaign to the issue of...

Product DescriptionA comprehensive account of the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The wife of King Louis VII of France and then of King Henry II of England, and mother to Richard Coeur de Lion and King John, she became the key political figure of the 12th century. Eleanor's long life inspired a number of legends. At twenty-five she set out for the Holy Land as a Crusader and at seventy-eight she crossed the Pyreness to Spain to fetch the granddaughter whose marriage would be, she hoped, a pledge of peace between England and France. This is a compassionate biography of this charismatic queen and the world she ruled over. About the AuthorMarion Meade is the author of six biographies and two novels. She studied at Northwestern University and received a Masters Degree in journalism from Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

Writer, director, actor, humorist. Woody Allen stands as one of our era's most celebrated artists. Starting in the 1950s, Allen began crafting a larger-than-life neurotic persona that has since entertained and enlightened millions. In his films, widely thought to be autobiographical explorations of his own comic fears and fixations, Allen carefully controlled the public's view of him as a loveable scamp. But, that all came crashing down the day Mia Farrow found a Polaroid on her mantle.What followed was a flurry of sensational headlines and legal battles. His relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, 34 years his junior and the step-daughter of his longtime girlfriend, caused shockwaves in the public's perception of the director. Yet, few biographers and journalists have explored what happened and why.In this, the first deep investigation of Allen's life and the events surrounding his split with Farrow, biographer Marion Meade tracks down dozens of friends, actors, neighbors, and film...

Recklessly brilliant, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky scandalized her 19th century world with a controversial new religion that tried to synthesize Eastern and Western philosophies. If her contemporaries saw her as a freak, a charlatan, and a snake oil salesman, she viewed herself as a special person born for great things. She firmly believed that it was her destiny to enlighten the world. Rebelliously breaking conventions, she was the antithesis of a pious religious leader. She cursed, smoked, overate, and needed to airbrush out certain inconvenient facts, like husbands, lovers, and a child.Marion Meade digs deep into Madame Blavatsky's life from her birth in Russia among the aristocracy to a penniless exile in Europe, across the Atlantic to New York where she became the first Russian woman naturalized as an American citizen, and finally moving on to India where she established the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society in 1882. As she chased from continent to...

In twelfth-century France, two of Europe's greatest minds met and fell in love. It was a love forbidden by the world around them and eventually they were torn apart from each other. But, the spark of it remained smoldering inside the lovers until their death and beyond.Heloise and her tutor, Peter Abelard, share a devotion passionate in its depth and beautiful in its thoughtfulness. They marry, and Heloise bears a son whom she names Astrolabe. However, all of this must be done in secret, for Abelard is forbidden to wed by the church which considers him a cleric. When the truth of their relationship is exposed, they are separated and punished both in body and soul.Marion Meade weaves history and fiction together in STEALING HEAVEN, an epic story of one of history's most tragic love affairs. With facts pulled from Heloise's actual love letters, Meade creates a poetic and sensual tapestry of France in the 12th century.Heloise and Abelard lived beyond their punishment in quiet...

From Publishers Weekly"Meade's lively biography recounts the unhappy life of the wise-cracking versifier, short story writer and critic," reported PW. "So detailed is Meade's book that this, one imagines, is the last time a biographer will need to explain why so talented a writer could at the same time be so nasty a human being." Photos. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product DescriptionDorothy Parker was known for her outrageous one-liners, her ruthless theater criticism, her clever verses and bittersweet stories, but there was another side to Dorothy Parker--a private life, set on a course of destruction. She suffered through two divorces, a string of painful affairs, a lifelong problem with alcohol, and several suicide attempts. In this lively, absorbing biography, Marion Meade illuminates both the dark side of Parker and her days of wicked wittiness at the Algonquin Round Table with the likes of Robert Benchley, George Kaufman, and Harold Ross, and in Hollywood with S.J. Perelman, William Faulkner, and Lilian Hellman. At the dazzling center of it all, Meade gives us the flamboyant, self-destructive, and brilliant Dorothy Parker.

Dorothy Parker biographer Marion Meade shares insight into the last days in the life of Dorothy Parker—the horrible and the hilarious—including her colorful friendship with Lillian Hellman, and the bizarre afterlife of Parker's remains from a file cabinet on Wall Street to a small burial site by the NAACP office in Baltimore. The Volney was a dignified residence hotel, favored by little old ladies and their dogs, on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Dorothy Parker died there, of a heart attack, on June 7, 1967. She was seventy-three and had been famous for almost half a century. As befitted a much loved humorist, poet, and story writer, The New York Times announced her exit in a front-page obituary. This was followed by a star-studded memorial service, also reported in the paper, which was attended by some 150 of her friends and admirers. More than twenty years later, on October 20, 1988, Parker was buried in Baltimore, in a memorial garden at the...