From Library Journal
This lively biography, based on the author's dissertation (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1997), traces the remarkable life of 19th-century social reformer and educator Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84). Nichols and her second husband, Thomas Low Nichols, are virtually unknown today, perhaps because their advocacy of free love alienated them from other reformers and because they spent their last several years in England. Nichols was most famous, even notorious, for her advocacy of hydrotherapy (or water cure treatments), exercise, and simple diet and for her lectures on female anatomy and public health. She and her husband were also outspoken supporters of marriage law reform, which they considered even more important than women's suffrage. As Silver-Isenstadt demonstrates, although the couple challenged the institution of marriage, they shared a remarkably warm and intellectually collaborative marriage themselves. The Nicholses' water cure establishments, lectures, and voluminous publications anticipated later movements in support of public health, women's health, and particularly legal rights. This engaging biography is the first to shed light on Mary Gove Nichols's rich and controversial life and as such is a worthwhile purchase for both public and academic libraries. Patricia A. Beaber, Coll. of New Jersey Lib., Ewing Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
First-time biographer Silver-Isenstadt carves a space in the annals of feminist social activists, health reformers, and sex educators for Mary Gove Nichols (1910-84), a forgotten radical thinker who cleared the trail for Margaret Sanger and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Precocious, spiritual-minded, and free-thinking, Nichols began her lifelong commitment to freeing women from perilous ignorance about their bodies after suffering an abusive marriage and witnessing her sister's early death. Counting Edgar Allen Poe among her friends and, later, Horace Mann among her enemies, Nichols, a celebrated and controversial advocate for women's health and equality, was a prolific writer, daring public speaker, and practitioner of the water cure. She found her soulmate in her second husband, Thomas Nichols, a journalist turned doctor and an ardent feminist. Together they zealously espoused their belief in the connection between health, sexual liberation, and freedom; founded a school; dabbled in spiritualism; then unexpectedly converted to Catholicism. The Nichols' story is complex, fascinating, and relevant, and Silver-Isenstadt elucidates their lives and ideas with nimble insight and verve. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


—Regina Morantz-Sanchez, University of Michigan, author of Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine
"An excellent and appealing feminist biography."


Review
"Although scholars have indeed recognized Mary Grove Nichols's attraction to various ideologies... no one has synthesized and explained (not to mention reveled in) the contradictory elements of her life. In this superb biography, however, Jean Silver-Isenstadt does just that... She broadens the meaning of both feminism and the hydropathic health movement, showing that the crux of Nichols's crusade for individual and social transformation was the revolutionary idea of women's sexual freedom."--Anne Taylor Kirschman, Ph.D., Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences


Review
"A pleasure to read. This is the story of Mary Gove Nichols and her second husband, Thomas Low Nichols, nineteenth-century reformers who dabbled in everything from health reform to free love."--Ronald L. NumbersUniversity of Wisconsin, author of Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White


Book Description
Though little known today, Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84) was once one of the most infamous and influential women in America, a radical social reformer and pioneering feminist who preached equality in marriage, free love, spiritualism, the health risks of corsets and masturbation, the benefits of the cold-water cure, and, above all, the importance of happiness. A victim of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her first husband, she made it her life's work to ensure that other women were better informed about their bodies and their opportunities than she had been. After leaving her first husband, she became a national figure in the 1840s and '50s by giving anatomy lectures around the country, attended by thousands of women, in which she openly discussed the needs, details, and desires of the female body. With her second husband, medical writer and social reformer Thomas Low Nichols, she embarked on an unprecedented intellectual and professional collaboration, and together they challenged the inequities of conventional marriage, demanded the right of every woman to have control over her body, and advocated universal good health.Considered too radical and mercurial even by their fellow reformers, especially after their conversion to Catholicism, Mary and her husband were often excluded from the very social causes they had helped to found--just as they have been from the histories of their era. In Shameless, Jean Silver-Isenstadt offers the first biography of this remarkable woman who paved the way for such activists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger. Drawing on the extensive public and private writings of the Nicholses and their peers, Silver-Isenstadt vividly portrays Mary Gove Nichols' courageous life and visionary intellect, revealing the rich diversity of opinion within nineteenth-century America's social reform movements and uncovering the inspiring story of a woman who dared to live by the utopian principles she advocated.


From the Publisher
"First-time biographer Silver-Isenstadt carves a space in the annals of feminist social activists, health reformers, and sex educators for Mary Gove Nichols, a forgotten radical thinker who cleared the trail for Margaret Sanger and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Precocious, spiritual-minded, and free-thinking . . . she found her soulmate in her second husband, Thomas Nichols, a journalist turned doctor and an ardent feminist. Together they zealously espoused their belief in the connection between health, sexual liberation, and freedom; founded a school; dabbled in spiritualism; then unexpectedly converted to Catholicism. The Nichols' [Mary and her husband Thomas] story is complex, fascinating and relevant, and Silver-Isenstadt elucidates their lives and ideas with nimble insight and verve." -Booklist "Shameless is a terrific book, a compelling and brilliantly written narrative of the life, times, and works of the little known nineteenth-century educator and reformer Mary Gove Nichols. Nichols was well ahead of her time on a wide variety of issues—mainly women's issues—and it is satisfying to see her finally getting credit for her courageous work on women's health, on modern marriage, on sexuality, and on community. This book is an eye-opener; it has wonderful descriptions of the water cure, of utopian communes, and of nineteenth century marriages ranging from awful to great. Many well-known figures—Emerson, Fuller, Poe, Whitman, Horace Greeley, Henry James Sr. and Frances Osgood appear as well. This is also a love story. Jean Silver-Isenstadt has written a splendid biography. The vivid narrative is driven by historical fact, responsibly documented and enriched by cultural theory. The result is altogether as attractive as a good novel."—Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: The Mind on Fire "A pleasure to read. This is the story of Mary Gove Nichols and her second husband, Thomas Low Nichols, nineteenth-century reformers who dabbled in everything from health reform to free love." —Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin, author of Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White


About the Author
Jean Silver-Isenstadt holds a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She lives with her husband and three children in Columbia, Maryland.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Though little known today, Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84) was once one of the most infamous and influential women in America, a radical social reformer who preached equality in marriage, free love, spiritualism, the health risks of corsets and masturbation, the benefits of the cold-water cure, and, above all, the importance of happiness. A victim of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her first husband, she made it her life's work to ensure that other women were better informed about their bodies and their opportunities than she had been. After leaving her first husband, she became a national figure in the 1840s and '50s by giving anatomy lectures around the country, attended by thousands of women, in which she openly discussed the needs, details, and desires of the female body. With her second husband, medical writer and social reformer Thomas Low Nichols, she embarked on an unprecedented intellectual and professional collaboration, and together they challenged the inequities of conventional marriage, demanded the right of every woman to have control over her own body, and advocated universal good health." Considered too radical and mercurial even by their fellow reformers, especially after their conversion to Catholicism, Mary and her husband were often excluded from the very social causes they had helped to found - just as they have been from the histories of their era. In Shameless, Jean L. Silver-Isenstadt offers the first biography of this woman who paved the way for such activists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger. Drawing on the extensive public and private writings of the Nicholses and their peers, Silver-Isenstadt portrays Mary Gove Nichols's courageous life and visionary intellect, revealing the rich diversity of opinion within nineteenth-century America's social reform movements and uncovering the inspiring story of a woman who dared to live by the utopian principles she advocated.

SYNOPSIS

A biography of the influential but now-forgotten 19th-century American social reformer who preached equality in marriage, free love, and the cold-water cure.

Though little known today, Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84) was once one of the most infamous and influential women in America, a radical social reformer and pioneering feminist who preached equality in marriage, free love, spiritualism, the health risks of corsets and masturbation, the benefits of the cold-water cure, and, above all, the importance of happiness. A victim of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her first husband, she made it her life's work to ensure that other women were better informed about their bodies and their opportunities than she had been. After leaving her first husband, she became a national figure in the 1840s and '50s by giving anatomy lectures around the country, attended by thousands of women, in which she openly discussed the needs, details, and desires of the female body. With her second husband, medical writer and social reformer Thomas Low Nichols, she embarked on an unprecedented intellectual and professional collaboration, and together they challenged the inequities of conventional marriage, demanded the right of every woman to have control over her body, and advocated universal good health.

Considered too radical and mercurial even by their fellow reformers, especially after their conversion to Catholicism, Mary and her husband were often excluded from the very social causes they had helped to found￯﾿ﾽjust as they have been from the histories of their era. In Shameless, Jean Silver-Isenstadt offers the first biography of this remarkable woman who paved the way for such activists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger. Drawing on the extensive public and private writings of the Nicholses and their peers, Silver-Isenstadt vividly portrays Mary Gove Nichols' courageous life and visionary intellect, revealing the rich diversity of opinion within nineteenth-century America's social reform movements and uncovering the inspiring story of a woman who dared to live by the utopian principles she advocated.

Author Biography: Jean Silver-Isenstadt holds a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of Pennsylvania and will soon graduate from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She lives with her husband and three children in Columbia, Maryland.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booklist

First-time biographer Silver-Isenstadt carves a space in the annals of feminist social activists, health reformers, and sex educators for Mary Gove Nichols, a forgotten radical thinker who cleared the trail for Margaret Sanger and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Precocious, spiritual-minded, and free-thinking . . . she found her soulmate in her second husband, Thomas Nichols, a journalist turned doctor and an ardent feminist. Together they zealously espoused their belief in the connection between health, sexual liberation, and freedom; founded a school; dabbled in spiritualism; then unexpectedly converted to Catholicism. The Nichols' [Mary and her husband Thomas] story is complex, fascinating and relevant, and Silver-Isenstadt elucidates their lives and ideas with nimble insight and verve.

Library Journal

This lively biography, based on the author's dissertation (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1997), traces the remarkable life of 19th-century social reformer and educator Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84). Nichols and her second husband, Thomas Low Nichols, are virtually unknown today, perhaps because their advocacy of free love alienated them from other reformers and because they spent their last several years in England. Nichols was most famous, even notorious, for her advocacy of hydrotherapy (or water cure treatments), exercise, and simple diet and for her lectures on female anatomy and public health. She and her husband were also outspoken supporters of marriage law reform, which they considered even more important than women's suffrage. As Silver-Isenstadt demonstrates, although the couple challenged the institution of marriage, they shared a remarkably warm and intellectually collaborative marriage themselves. The Nicholses' water cure establishments, lectures, and voluminous publications anticipated later movements in support of public health, women's health, and particularly legal rights. This engaging biography is the first to shed light on Mary Gove Nichols's rich and controversial life and as such is a worthwhile purchase for both public and academic libraries. Patricia A. Beaber, Coll. of New Jersey Lib., Ewing Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Mary Gove Nichols was an infamous national figure in the 1840s and '50s, a social reformer and advocate of free love who drew huge crowds to her scandalous anatomy lectures. Abused by her first husband, she worked with her second, a physician, for the cause of universal health. Nichols' progressive and prolific writings about women's rights, alternative medicine, and sexuality foreshadowed those of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Emma Goldman, and Margaret Sanger. "Mary's trek," writes her biographer, a scholar of the history of science and currently a medical student, "was rutted, steep, and circuitous. Her strivings not only shed light on the 19th century, but they also give resonance to choosings." An excellent addition to any women's studies collection. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Shameless is a terrific book, a compelling and brilliantly written narrative of the life, times, and works of the little known nineteenth-century educator and reformer Mary Gove Nichols. Nichols was well ahead of her time on a wide variety of issues—mainly women's issues—and it is satisfying to see her finally getting credit for her courageous work on women's health, on modern marriage, on sexuality, and on community. This book is an eye-opener; it has wonderful descriptions of the water cure, of utopian communes, and of nineteenth century marriages ranging from awful to great. Many well-known figures—Emerson, Fuller, Poe, Whitman, Horace Greeley, Henry James Sr. and Frances Osgood appear as well. This is also a love story. Jean Silver-Isenstadt has written a splendid biography. The vivid narrative is driven by historical fact, responsibly documented and enriched by cultural theory. The result is altogether as attractive as a good novel. (Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: The Mind on Fire)  — Robert D. Richardson

An excellent and appealing feminist biography. (Regina Morantz-Sanchez, University of Michigan, author of Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine)  — Regina Morantz-Sanchez