Book description
This biography of an unconventional woman in late 19th-century
America is a study of a search for individual autonomy and spiritual
growth. Laura Holloway-Langford, a "rebel girl" from
Tennessee, moved to New York City, where she supported her family as a
journalist. She soon became famous as the author of Ladies of the
White House, which secured her financial independence. Promoted to
associate editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, she gave readings and
lectures and became involved in progressive women's causes, the
temperance movement, and theosophy-even traveling to Europe to meet
Madame Blavatsky, the movement's leader, and writing for the
theosophist newspaper The Word. In the early 1870s, she began a
correspondence with Eldress Anna White of the Mount Lebanon, New York,
Shaker community, with whom she shared belief in pacifism, feminism,
vegetarianism, and cremation. Attracted by the simplicity of Shaker
life, she eventually bought a farm from the Canaan Shakers, where she
lived and continued to write until her death in 1930. In tracing the
life of this spiritual seeker, Diane Sasson underscores the
significant role played by cultural mediators like Holloway-Langford
in bringing new religious ideas to the American public and
contributing to a growing interest in eastern religions and
alternative approaches to health and spirituality that would alter the
cultural landscape of the nation.
Diane Sasson received her doctorate from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of The Shaker Spiritual
Narrative (1983) and articles on American folklore and communal
societies. She was Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
Program at Duke University, and served as President of the National
Association of Graduate Liberal Studies. For the last decade, she has
been on the faculty at Vanderbilt University.
