Yearning for the New Age

Laura Holloway-Langford and Late Victorian Spirituality

Inbunden, Engelska, 2012

539 kr

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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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2012-05-07
Mått152 x 229 x 24 mm
Vikt680 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieIndiana University Press
Antal sidor368
FörlagIndiana University Press
ISBN9780253001771

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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.

ForewordAcknowledgmentsA Note on NamesIntroduction1. Sex, Suffrage, and Religious Seekers2. "A Clairvoyant of the First Water"3. "Better Come"4. "The Bomb-shell from the Dugpa World"5. Fantasizing the Occult6. "Our Golden Word: Try"7. The Lady Mrs. X8. Disseminating New Ideas9. Music of the Spheres10. "Dear Friend and Sister"11. Who Tells the Tale?Epilogue: Seeking LauraList of AbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex

DianeSasson's excellent biography of Laura Holloway-Langford (1843–1930) uses evidence from letter collections, 29 books, and more than 80 articles that Holloway-Langford published from1868 to 1917, show how Holloway-Langford challenged traditional values that circumscribed women's lives.(Nova Religio) As Sasson's title suggests, there is an inherent ambiguity in the life of [Laura Holloway-Langford]. On the one hand, there is the spiritual quest from liberal Protestantism to spiritualism to theosophy to Buddhism; on the other, there is her pragmatically progressive critique of sexual norms and her championing of women's rights (though she was ambivalent about suffrage), women's labor, and the agenda of the New Woman.(Journal of American History) Yearning for the New Age will be particularly insightful to those who study the development of alternative religions—including Spiritualism, Shakerism, and Theosophy—in the United States and the roles of women within such traditions. . . . Along its richly detailed biography, readers of Yearning for the New Age will encounter important additions and new materials that will deepen historical understandings of New Age movements in America. (American Studies)