Rating: 
Summary: MBE for the soccer mom/ 'you go girl!' modern woman?
Review: All in all, not a bad effort. Admittedly, it was annoying at times to read the author's personal interjections within the body of the manuscript. But then I reasoned that Gill's effort here is largely a surveyed reassessment of all previous major works on Mrs. Eddy's life. As such, (and as she mentions repeatedly throughout the text), there is no point in her going over ground already covered in herculean fashion ala' Robert Peel. Unless Gill had new information on Mrs. Eddy previously unpublished or discussed, an exhaustive work would simply have been akin to reinventing the wheel. Better on an event-by-event basis (the most important ones, anyway) to reconsider some of Mrs. Eddy's more controversial and significant moves and this Gill does with reasonably good aplomb. The author's take on Mrs. Eddy as the proverbial twenty-first century woman trapped in a repressive, nineteenth century Victorian society should play well with a number of women today (particularly those who find themselves divorced, widowed, homeless, raising children on their own, or single by choice). That may sound like a cynical statement to some, but it's not meant to be. It simply may be the best way for MBE to 'fit in' with this age. That being said, I still feel there is a great deal about Mrs. Eddy that Gill misses capturing or simply glances over in an effort to get to more juicy details (the chapter on the plot to murder Daniel Spofford, while entertaining, I thought to be a bit much). Nothing, I suppose, sells so well about Mrs. Eddy than controversy.
Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant work
Review: Gill debunks the past so-called 'facts' of the inaccurate and false Milmine and others, traditions about an 'evil' Mary Baker Eddy. She includes a great Appendix to juxtapose these different biographies. She uncovers outright misogyny toward Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science Church's own error of a sugar coated mythologizeing of Mary Baker Eddy which doubtless, she would not have approved of herself, from all her own admonitions for others to stop being preoccupied with her personality.She shows how the inaccurate information of a certain biographical tradition about Eddy, based in the beginnings of yellow journalism, served the interest of sensationalism of an early era of low class profit driven tabloid journalism - which even Willa Cather was later ashamed to admit she participated in, by evidence of her own last will and testament. Gill makes Eddy human, which in no way detracts from her revelations as a religious discoverer and healer. You do not learn so much about Eddy's own personal preoccupation with healing, however, but you do learn why she felt the need to end suffering in her own life and others. I loved the chapter on Mark Twain, whose daughter was healed in Christian Science; -- if you be sure to read all Gill's copious footnotes, you'll find this out. Gill sees Twain with more sophistication than those who would merely lump him against Mary Baker Eddy and uncovers his great ironic admiration through his ambivalence as a 19th century male (who must have felt some competition with her.) It is a sober balance to the poor scholarship - where is serves Ms.Frasier's purposes - in her book, 'God's Perfect Child', which is a wholey different kind of book - a catharsis of the disenchanted and wounded feelings. Frasier has a right to her feelings about her experience but it is no excuse for really bad scholarship. She had a bone to pick and literalist fundamentalist parents (let it not be said that Christian Scientist's do not suffer from the same kind of fundamentalist stupidity of other religions) but she is certainly not the caliber of historical researcher as Gillian Gill. Frasier's inaccuracies will reinforce the minds who want to believe false myths about Eddy even if Gill takes the high road for true meticulous scholarship. Unfortunately since Fraziers's 19th century era research was so bad it makes me doubt much of what she says about her 20th century revelations. As a third party and not a Christian Scientist, you get the feeling Gillian Gill came away admiring Mary Baker Eddy for what she was up against as a 19th century woman -- the 'cult of womanhood', and 'true womanhood' -- myths of her own era which tried to supress women through a fashionable and harmful glorification of physical weakness and illness. A time when a woman could not own her own children, speak in public, or hardly even own her own clothes. It was a time when a woman was 'one husband away from poverty.' So, how dare she,a woman, even contemplate writing about metaphysics when she lived in a time when she could barely even think about obtaining the higher education that might have equipped her better to write about her spiriaul discoveries! No wonder Mary Baker Eddy leaned on a 'Father-MOTHER,God'. How can you really understand Mary Baker Eddy fairly unless you can see her with her contemporaries? Gill starts us down that road. Gill did not start off an admirer. She obviously feels for the predicaments of Eddy's situation and wanted to do her justice with all the bad scholarship and just plain lopsided hate for Eddy she found out there. I can see Eddy (the forest) now, better for (the trees) all the previous bios on her. This lends balance and fairness to the landscape and I only hope Christian Scientists, out there, realize what a service this book does to the true life of 'the Discoverer, Founder, and Leader' as they call her, of their church. [Brendan Gill, as one of the detractors, particularly needs to read Gill for his laughable ignorace about Eddy in his book 'Late Bloomers' put out by Artisan. He is pathetically innacurate and probably never cracked her work 'Science and Health' which is anything but what he calls 'voluminous'. He does all religious women professionals and leaders a disservice through his falling even far short of Twain in his oblique and obtuse misunderstanding of her.]
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of time
Review: Gill's book is 2 inches thick. Nothing is new and Eddy as all CS approved literature always comes out on top. She is the infallible prophet that without Rev. Wiggin's revisions of Science and Health, making sense of non-sense, she would have never suceeded in having individuals follow what she herself never did. Morphine was her friend when pain was present. For a more objective view see: Fraser's "God's Perfect Child" or Bliss "Destiny of the Mother Church" which really shows Eddy=Christ. Kessinger Publishers publish a lot of out of print Eddy Books/Christian Science books and is worth a look at.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed to read
Review: I was so impressed by this book. In a way, it changed my life. I've read many, many biographies of Eddy, from Tomlinson to Peel to the newest one authorized by her church (Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer), and this was the first I could relate to directly. Others have been less than completely frank about Eddy's early life-they either idolize her or mock her. I was also fascinated to learn more details about Eddy's parents and siblings-with all their foibles and weaknesses. Gill's biography comes up to my standard of straightforward honesty, without either the apologetics of a follower or the sarcasm of a detractor. Gill weaves contextual information about life in the 1800s throughout her work, yet as a woman of the late 20th century, I found myself relating to Eddy and her struggle in so many ways. She was a single mom. She wrote romantic fiction and poetry. She lived through both widowhood and divorce. She had financial struggles, and, for a long time, no place to call home. She would get angry on occasion, yet she was also sublimely loving. She retained a girlish pleasure in clothes and fashion-she loved ice cream! Her life was not perfect, nor was she a perfect human being, yet she still rose to the heights of spiritual healer and religious leader-all in the face of intense opposition that would be difficult for anyone today, let alone a woman of her time period. Each challenge she faced was turned into an opportunity; each relationship that ended was grist for the mill of her own spiritual growth. As someone who is learning to practice spiritual healing, I found it inspiring to know that, if Eddy is any example, I don't have to be a perfect human being in order to get started. This shouldn't be the only biography one reads to get a complete composite of Mary Baker Eddy, but it's certainly an excellent foundation against which other information can be juxtaposed and evaluated. Of course, reading her seminal work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, gets to the heart of her mission the fastest way of all.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed to read
Review: I was so impressed by this book. In a way, it changed my life. I've read many, many biographies of Eddy, from Tomlinson to Peel to the newest one authorized by her church (Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer), and this was the first I could relate to directly. Others have been less than completely frank about Eddy's early life-they either idolize her or mock her. I was also fascinated to learn more details about Eddy's parents and siblings-with all their foibles and weaknesses. Gill's biography comes up to my standard of straightforward honesty, without either the apologetics of a follower or the sarcasm of a detractor. Gill weaves contextual information about life in the 1800s throughout her work, yet as a woman of the late 20th century, I found myself relating to Eddy and her struggle in so many ways. She was a single mom. She wrote romantic fiction and poetry. She lived through both widowhood and divorce. She had financial struggles, and, for a long time, no place to call home. She would get angry on occasion, yet she was also sublimely loving. She retained a girlish pleasure in clothes and fashion-she loved ice cream! Her life was not perfect, nor was she a perfect human being, yet she still rose to the heights of spiritual healer and religious leader-all in the face of intense opposition that would be difficult for anyone today, let alone a woman of her time period. Each challenge she faced was turned into an opportunity; each relationship that ended was grist for the mill of her own spiritual growth. As someone who is learning to practice spiritual healing, I found it inspiring to know that, if Eddy is any example, I don't have to be a perfect human being in order to get started. This shouldn't be the only biography one reads to get a complete composite of Mary Baker Eddy, but it's certainly an excellent foundation against which other information can be juxtaposed and evaluated. Of course, reading her seminal work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, gets to the heart of her mission the fastest way of all.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary achievement
Review: Ms Gill is not a Christian Scientist but you would suppose she has lived with her subject for a very long time. Her considerable forensic skills are just what her subject needs. In the sections dealing with P.P Quimby, the Misses Ware and Eddy's second husband Daniel Patterson, she contributes solid new material. Frequently she demolishes myths promulgated by the Mimine/Dakin/Braden biographies (and in a devastating appendix, analyses the motivations of these biographers). A new Mary Baker Eddy emerges, something of diamond in the rough but a diamond to be reckoned with, nonetheless. But if Ms Gill's objectivity is the result of not being a Christian Scientist, it also gives her book a problem. Her grasp of Christian Science theology is not...well, not complete. This leads, for example, to a very good joke about what Christian Science calls 'animal magnetism' but a joke based on a misconception nonetheless. Without a more complete understanding of Mrs Eddy's thinking, it is impossible for Ms Gill to provide a balanced view of her later years. The frenetic outward activity of Mrs Eddy's life in her eighties and even nineties is described minus the ballast of the spiritual mediation that made this activity possible. But this is still a very good book and a fun read. Ms Gill says Mrs Eddy would have enjoyed meeting Mark Twain. It's certain Mrs Eddy would have relished meeting Ms Gill.
Rating:
Summary: Feminist perspective on the life of Mary Baker Eddy
Review: The Gillian Gill biography, Mary Baker Eddy, is eminently worthwhile reading for any student of Christian Science, of historical figures, or of the art of writing. Gillian Gill is not a Christian Scientist. Moreover, the book was sponsored by Radcliffe College as part of its Radcliffe Biography Series. Radcliffe's president characterizes the Series as "an expression of the value we see in documenting and understanding the varied lives of women." The resulting feminist gloss evident in this book, presented from the viewpoint of one outside the Christian Science movement, provides a very different perspective on Mary Baker Eddy's life from that offered by other Eddy biographies. Gill approaches her task with a thoroughly sincere, perhaps even reverent respect for her subject. As if to illustrate why such respect is both deserved and overdue, Gill notes in her Preface that Mary Baker Eddy is not even mentioned in the 1993 essay of feminist historian Gerda Lerner, "One Thousand Years of Feminist Bible Criticism." Even the casual observer will recognize the absurdity of omitting, from such an essay, a woman who founded an international religious movement based on reinterpretation of the Bible. Lerner's essay notwithstanding, feminism, as a philosophical ally of liberalism, has routinely given religion short shrift, and Gill's Eddy biography thus helps to fill this gaping void in feminist scholarship. Gill's feminist perspective is an occasional distraction, but she more than compensates with her paramount emphasis on careful scholarship, and a fluid prose that leaves one almost unaware of the reading. The mix of feminism and the viewpoint of a non-Christian Scientist is frequently evident. Usually, but not always, the mix produces entirely appropriate results. Thus, when Gill describes the original 1894 Church she speaks of a "womblike structure" that "seems to gather [her] in." It strikes her as "a deeply female space." These are perceptive observations which it seems unlikely would occur one whose intellectual moorings were in traditional culture rather than in feminist theory. On the other hand, when Gill speaks of widowhood, not Mary Glover's widowhood but widowhood in general terms, her concern is solely that it leaves women "uncomfortably dependent on the goodwill of [their] family," and she notes that Mary Baker Eddy was fortunate to have received an important "lesson in survival" from her grandmother's many years of widowhood. Gill's feminist inclinations apparently blind her to a broader context of widowhood: although in some cases it leaves a woman "uncomfortably dependent," in all cases it leaves a man dead. Unless one is prepared to argue that death is preferable to uncomfortable dependence as a state of being, one would have to acknowledge that it was the men of the 19th century, moreso than the women, who needed but were denied "lessons in survival." While much more in a similar vein could be cited, the obviously careful scholarship behind this book, and its admirably readable prose, more than compensate for minor distractions. One of the more interesting and informative aspects of Gill's work is the careful attention given to other Eddy biographers and commentators. Gill is forthright and thorough in discussing them, and pulls no punches in disagreements with them, especially those who are hostile to Mary Baker Eddy. From Milmine/Cather to Clemens to Peel, all come under Gill's careful and unflinching scrutiny. Gill herself is not uniformly kind to Eddy; however, from all appearances she does strive to be true to the historical record. She is completely justified in suggesting one cannot say that in good conscience about several other Eddy biographers. Beginning, as one would expect, with the birth of Mary Baker in Bow, New Hampshire, Gill ends her story describing the view from the site of Mrs. Eddy's New Hampshire home, Pleasant View, looking toward the Bow hills. She thus encloses and gathers in her subject in a distinctly maternal way, perhaps not unlike what she experienced on visiting the Mother Church. Just as the product of Mary Baker Eddy's work, coming down through the years, had enveloped Gill, the product of Gill's work similarly envlopes Eddy. It may be saying too much to suggest that this mutuality, a seeming flow of respect and esteem coursing between the author and her historical subject, is an important dynamic of the book. Such mutuality is consistent, however, with a central theme of equity-feminist scholarship: paying homage to female historical figures who, in their time and through their work, similarly paid homage to the generations of women who would come after them. Between the beginning and end, Gill is no less a nurturing and caring mother to her historical subject, protective, proud and understanding, and in the end willing to acknowledge its faults as she sees them, and yet grant it unconditional acceptance. These are among the qualities that make this a biography well worth reading, and then rereading.
Rating:
Summary: in depth research with particular emphasis on women's rights
Review: This book ranks right up there with Robert Peel's biographies, but because it is written from the point of view of a university professor, not a "church" historian, it carries even more authority than Peel's.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of Women's Studies
Review: This is MUCH more than a biography on Mary Baker Eddy. It is a MASTERPIECE of women's studies as Gill explores what it was like for a widow to make her way in the world in the late 1800s and how people reacted to an uppity woman who dared to start a new religion. In a sense it is also a mystery, unraveled bit by bit as Gill explores the way early biographers of Eddy misrepresented her and purposely went looking for information to discredit her, and how Eddy's former friends sold information to the media. There is also the intriguing story of how Gill came to write the book, the hoops she had to jump through with the Christian Science church, and her unflagging search for truth. I was only vaguely interested in Eddy when I picked up this book, but soon I could not put it down. Eddy led a fascinating life with many strange twists and turns, and all this alone makes interesting reading. But in the hands of Gill the book is deep, thought-provoking, mesmerizing (to use a term current in Eddy's life). It is wonderfully well-written and thought out, and really is just a joy to read. It resurrects Mary Baker Eddy as a pioneering woman, and with all of her flaws, shows her to be a truly remarkable person.
Rating:
Summary: Sensitive, thorough, and thought-provoking
Review: This is not a light book--in tone or weight! However, it gave me a rich, deep, understanding of Mary Baker Eddy as a person and as a figure in history--plus many hours of reading pleasure. Most well-researched biographies are dry and factual. Ms. Gill has managed to organize an unusual life into chapters that are more than chronological slices. Step by step, she takes the reader through the development of Ms. Eddy's thought and philosophy. At the same time, we learn a huge amount of Ms. Eddy as a literary, spiritual, and political leader. If you buy this book, please don't neglect to read the footnotes. Ms. Gill has packed them with tons of interesting trivia that otherwise would have cluttered up her well-turned prose. This is a rare and valuable work--one that should become the standard starting place for any serious student of either the Christian Science movement or of women's role in the late 19th century. I hope that Ms. Gill will receive the time and resources to complete other projects, such as this one.
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