Notorious Victoria: the life of Victoria Woodhull, uncensored

by Mary Gabriel

Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927) was the first woman to run for president (sharing the ballot with Frederick Douglass). She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress and to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Gloria Steinem has called her "the most controversial suffragist of them all." Famed nineteenth-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast portrayed her as "Mrs. Satan." She butted heads with such pillars of society as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Susan B. Anthony. So why have most people never heard of Victoria Woodhull? Journalist Mary Gabriel's authoritative biography provides the answer: she was written out of history, censored by historians of the women's movement as too scandalous. Victoria had worked as a traveling clairvoyant in medicine shows. She was accused of blackmail and prostitution and was jailed for printing obscenities. She preached - and practiced - the concept of free love, once living with her husband, her ex-husband, and her