In this episode we’ll listen to excerpts from the Library’s 2014 program “Truth and Consequences: Biographies of Mary Baker Eddy,” featuring answers from our senior research staff to questions that listeners asked. We’ll hear how the two earliest biographies on Eddy present very different views. Discussion also covers the evolution of additional scholarly biographies. How have they led to a more realistic and accessible understanding of Eddy? And how do the Library’s resources support continued research into her story—and its significance?
In this episode, we reference content found on the Library’s website. Here are links to those resources:
- Truth and Consequences: Biographies of Mary Baker Eddy—This original 2014 program discusses many biographies of Eddy, including A World More Bright: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, released in 2013 and targeted to young adults.
- Episode 18 Mark Twain, Mary Baker Eddy, and the news—Former Library fellow and scholar Ashley Squires discusses how her research has helped clarify the respective roles of Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine, in the authorship of the 1907 McClure’s magazine serial on Eddy.
- Timeline of biographies about Mary Baker Eddy—This resource provides a chronology and summary of biographical selections on Eddy, from the earliest to the most recent.
- Spiritual Writing: Mary Baker Eddy and Julian of Norwich—In this Library program, Rev. Dr. Carl Scovel and Judy Huenneke, the Library’s Senior Research Archivist, discuss the genre of spiritual autobiography. They explore the medieval document Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich, and Eddy’s late-nineteenth century account, Retrospection and Introspection.
- Episode 10: Mary Baker Eddy as a copyright activist (Part one) and Episode 11: Mary Baker Eddy as a copyright activist (Part two)—These two podcast episodes with Dr. Andrew Ventimiglia reveal the importance Eddy placed on preserving the copyright to her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
Podcast guests
Judy Huenneke is the Library’s Senior Research Archivist. She graduated from the School of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University. She also completed a second master’s in history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, with a thesis on Louisiana slave owner, colonizationist, and reformer John McDonogh. Her work currently focuses on researching the history of the Christian Science movement, from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the present day.
Mike Davis, an Ohio native, has worked for over 30 years with the various historical collections now housed in The Mary Baker Eddy Library. He holds a Master’s degree in Library Science from San Jose State University. He has given numerous talks on the history of Christian Science and is the author of several historical articles published in Christian Science periodicals. His current work is with the Mary Baker Eddy Papers, an ongoing effort to annotate Eddy’s correspondence and contextualize them through historical essays.
