From the author of A Midwife's Tale, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for History, and The Age of Homespun-a revelatory, nuanced, and deeply intimate look at the world of early Mormon women whose seemingly ordinary lives belied an astonishingly revolutionary spirit, drive, and determination.
LAUREL THATCHER ULRICH was born in Sugar City, Idaho. She holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire, University of Utah, and Simmons College. She is 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University and past president of the American Historical Association. As a MacArthur Fellow, Ulrich worked on the PBS documentary based on A Midwife's Tale. Her work is also featured on an award-winning website called dohistory.org. She is immediate past president of the Mormon History Association. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Excitement about Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's
A HOUSE FULL OF FEMALES "Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a historian's
historian. For more than three decades, she has dazzled her
profession with archival discoveries, creative spark and an ability
to see 'history' where it once appeared there was none to be seen .
. . In the best ways, A House Full of Females remains a work of
traditional 'women's history, ' a straightforward exploration of
women's lives and experiences on their own terms . . . The work of
dedicated and imaginative historians like Ulrich allows us access
to lost worlds."
--Beverly Gage, The New York Times Book Review "As crucial as it is
fascinating . . . It's no secret that history is full of people,
often women, whose usually unpaid labor allowed famous men to make
their marks on the world. Their stories don't always make it to the
official record books, but historians like Ulrich make sure they're
not forgotten."
--Lily Rothman, Time "Movingly portrays believers' early struggles
. . . Ulrich is a gifted historian whose works have forged new
paths in women's studies."
--M.J. Andersen, The Boston Globe "This empathetic account of the
women of early Mormonism focusses on the doctrine of polygamy,
first articulated by Joseph Smith in 1843. Ulrich, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning historian, explores complex and contradictory
responses to a practice seen by Mormons as answering a divine
imperative to procreate; with many wives, a man could beget dozens
of "spirits" of the faith. Ulrich describes the daily lives of
these women in attentive detail, their sorrows (child-mortality
levels were high), their stubborn strength, and their willingness
to defy social norms. To the astonishment of the outside world, the
same women who vigorously defended multiple marriages also fought
for--and won--female suffrage."
--The New Yorker "O pioneers! Ulrich stitches together diaries,
poems, meeting minutes, and quilt designs into a fascinating
history of women's lives. Tough doesn't even begin to describe
it--they drove wagons across the frozen Midwest, bore and buried
children, spoke in tongues, farmed, and organized relief societies
while the men traveled on missions. (They drank and danced
too.)"
--Christine Smallwood, Harper's Magazine "A remarkable labor of
love. Laurel Ulrich brings her readers inside Mormon life during
the two formative generations of this distinctively American
religious community. Her close and insightful reading of diaries
and letters especially, in addition to a wealth of other records
(including an extraordinary quilt), enable her to convey an
appreciation of why Mormons committed to their
faith--notwithstanding the persecution and privations they faced
crossing the country and building their pioneer settlements. Ulrich
even enables outsiders to understand how polygamy functioned and
why Mormon women embraced and defended it against Victorian
condemnation. A House Full of Females is the richest work on the
social history of religion in a generation.
--Richard Brown, University of Connecticut
"The reader who opens A House full of Females is truly privileged
to have Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as their guide into the circles of
strong women who defended plural marriage before Utah voted to give
the vote to women. Ulrich takes us inside early Mormon communities,
house by house, arriving with her well-honed archival skills of
reading between the lines of diaries preserved in bags stitched of
drapery fabric and piecing together the scraps of correspondence
left behind to interpret a past that is especially meaningful to
her, carved as it was out of the West by her own forebears. A truly
extraordinary read."
--Janet Polasky, author of Revolutions without Borders
"Pulitzer-winner Ulrich gives readers a day-to-day look at the
hardships early Mormons endured as pioneers and religious outlaws
but also takes a broader view of longer-term changes in the
religion . . . Impeccable scholarship and a fascinating topic."
--Publishers Weekly
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