From Publishers Weekly
Stuart gives us the first modern biography of Maggie Fox, cofounder of spiritualism. After the two young Fox sisters, Maggie and Katy, claimed they had contacted spirits of the dead in 1848, a large religious movement coalesced around them. But that movement faded when, in 1888, Maggie Fox revealed that the ghostly communication had been a hoax. In this fast-paced biography, we follow Fox through the rise and fall of spiritualism, tracing her travels and lectures, her romance with Arctic explorer Elisha Kane and sister Katy's desperate slide into alcoholism. Stuart argues that, despite its fraudulence, spiritualism left a powerful legacy, influencing Duke University's 1920s studies of ESP, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's work on death and dying and today's interest in all things New Age. Though highly readable and entertaining, this biography leaves several large questions unanswered. Primary sources recording Maggie's own voice are few; readers may wish for more intimacy and a clearer sense of how Fox felt about the remarkable wool she was pulling over America's eyes. Stuart also neglects larger questions of social history: other than a brief excursus on mesmerism, she makes little attempt to explain why spiritualism was so very popular. Because Stuart neither takes us closely into Fox's heart and mind nor paints an especially rich picture of the mid–19th-century American spiritual landscape, this book engages but ultimately fails to satisfy. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Credited with cofounding the Spiritualist movement in mid-nineteenth-century America, Maggie Fox has remained an enduring mystery. In this painstakingly researched biography, Stuart seeks to retrace the rise and fall of this legendary medium. Did Maggie and her sister, Katy, really possess the ability to conjure up spirits, or was their convincing routine of raps and knocks merely a well-rehearsed and extremely lucrative performance greedy family members exploited? Seeking to get to the heart of this question, the author tracks Maggie's evolution from an upstate New York farm girl to an internationally renowned symbol of a quasi-religious movement boasting legions of fervent adherents. Along the way, she fell deeply in love with Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane, who, embarrassed by her dubious vocation, urged her to "quit this life of dreary sameness and suspected deceit." When a world-weary Maggie renounced Spiritualism as a fraud in 1888, then recanted her startling declaration one year later, the cause suffered a blow from which it never recovered. This life story opens an illuminating window on an era and a movement. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Here is the first authoritative biography of Margaret Fox, the world-famous medium and cofounder of the Spiritualism movement that swept America in the mid-1800s. In 1848, fifteen-year-old Maggie and her sister Katy created rapping sounds by manipulating their toe joints, practicing until they convinced their parents that their farmhouse was haunted. What started as a prank soon transformed into a movement: By 1853 more than thirty thousand mediums were at work, with Maggie among the most famous. But when she denounced the faith in 1888-appearing before a packed auditorium in her stocking feet to demonstrate-Spiritualism withered almost as quickly as it had bloomed.

Through the memoirs of the Fox sisters, the letters of Maggie's Arctic explorer husband, contemporary newspaper accounts, and other primary sources, Nancy Rubin Stuart creates a vibrant portrait of a Victorian-era woman at the heart of the tumults of her time.



About the Author
Nancy Rubin Stuart is the author of several books, including American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post and Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In 1848 Maggie Fox and her sisters caused a sensation by rapping out messages they received from the spirit world, ushering in a movement that would eventually claim more than a million followers across the nation. Forty years later, appearing before a packed audience at New York's Academy of Music, that same Maggie Fox denounced spiritualism, claiming it was all a hoax.

The Reluctant Spiritualist tells the riveting true story of Maggie's remarkable life. When she was fifteen, she and her sister Katy created "raps" by manipulating their toe joints. What started as a prank soon grew into a phenomenon: Maggie's demonstrations astounded the press, made her and her sisters celebrities, inspired imitators, and fascinated the most prominent people of her era, among them Horace Greeley, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William James. She also fascinated the glamorous Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. Their passionate romance and secret marriage made headlines, but his untimely death drove the grief-stricken Maggie to make her scandalous confession. Spiritualism waned, but Maggie's spirit lives on-even today celebrity mediums Sylvia Brown and James Van Praagh speak to millions of believers.

Through the memoirs of the Fox sisters, newly discovered letters, and other primary sources, Nancy Rubin Stuart has created a vibrant portrait of a Victorian woman at the heart of the religious, social, and spiritual upheavals of her time.

FROM THE CRITICS

Daniel Stashower - The Washington Post

he great strength of Stuart's book is that she provides the necessary historical context, and shows the deception gathering force by slow degrees against a climate of willing belief … At the same time, Stuart convincingly places the Fox sisters at a nexus of social and political change, most notably the suffrage and abolitionist movements, whose proponents were powerfully drawn to the notion of otherwise meek and helpless girls in command of potent forces. If those forces were a sham, they represented something that was not -- a yearning to believe in the possibility of contact with dead souls. This yearning, as Stuart demonstrates, was not easily derailed.

Publishers Weekly

Stuart gives us the first modern biography of Maggie Fox, cofounder of spiritualism. After the two young Fox sisters, Maggie and Katy, claimed they had contacted spirits of the dead in 1848, a large religious movement coalesced around them. But that movement faded when, in 1888, Maggie Fox revealed that the ghostly communication had been a hoax. In this fast-paced biography, we follow Fox through the rise and fall of spiritualism, tracing her travels and lectures, her romance with Arctic explorer Elisha Kane and sister Katy's desperate slide into alcoholism. Stuart argues that, despite its fraudulence, spiritualism left a powerful legacy, influencing Duke University's 1920s studies of ESP, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's work on death and dying and today's interest in all things New Age. Though highly readable and entertaining, this biography leaves several large questions unanswered. Primary sources recording Maggie's own voice are few; readers may wish for more intimacy and a clearer sense of how Fox felt about the remarkable wool she was pulling over America's eyes. Stuart also neglects larger questions of social history: other than a brief excursus on mesmerism, she makes little attempt to explain why spiritualism was so very popular. Because Stuart neither takes us closely into Fox's heart and mind nor paints an especially rich picture of the mid-19th-century American spiritual landscape, this book engages but ultimately fails to satisfy. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews