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Bringing down the Colonel : a sex scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "powerless" woman who took on Washington

Miller, Patricia 1964- (author.).

Summary: Madeline Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard's hand-- then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. Pollard sued Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Miller tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back-- and became an unlikely nineteenth-century women's rights crusader.

Record details

ISBN: 9780374252663
Physical Description: 368 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
print
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
Copyright: ©2018

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-348) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Gold to be made -- A bright and brainy woman -- A bastard catch'd -- The left-hand road -- The Wanton widow -- Not so easily handled -- What shall we do with our daughters? -- For the likes of me -- The needle, the school room, and the store -- A house of mercy -- Miss Pollard's ruin in Lexington -- Somebody's daughter -- A man of passion -- Hindered, not ruined -- The front parlor and the back gate -- The cavalier and the puritans -- Refusing to behave -- Redemption.