"Willa Cather is indisputably the author of The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science. For readers and students today it presents an important profile of Cather's developing voice and a glimpse of subjects and styles that would be her special stock in trade. As the strange drama of Mrs. Eddy's life unfolds in the narrative we become aware of Willa Cather, the burgeoning novelist with a powerful and sympathetic interest in human psychology."--David Stouck
This controversial biography of the founder of the Christian Science church was serialized in McClure's Magazine in 1907-8 and published as a book the next year. It disappeared almost overnight and has been difficult to find ever since. Although a Canadian mewspaperwoman named Georgine Milmine collected the material and was credited as the author, The Life Of Mary Baker G. Eddy was actually written by Willa Cather, an editor at McClure's at that time.
In his introduction to this Bison Book edition, David Stouck reveals new evidence of Cather's authorship of The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy. He discusses her fidelity to facts and her concern with psychology and philosophy that would take creative form later on. Indeed, this biography contains "some of the finest portrait sketches and reflections on human nature that Willa Cather would ever write." David Stouck is a professor of English at Simon Fraser University and the author of Willa Cather's Imagination.