Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography

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W. W. Norton & Company, Oct 17, 2008 - Biography & Autobiography - 464 pages

"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.

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Contents

Preface to the 2008 edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Parkers and Todds II A Second Family
Mary Todds Lexington
Springfield Courtship
The Springfield Years VI The Politics of Marriage
First Lady
A Vanishing Circle
The First Years
Exile and Return
Trial and Confinement
Last Years
Notes
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

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.

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