Talk:Mary Baker Eddy

approach to this article

I have been strongly influenced by Gillian Gill's masterful biography of Mary Baker Eddy which was published in 1998. It's author was the first biographer to be granted access to archives closely held by the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston. This now out-of-print, 713-page tome (150+ pages of which are notes, references and appendices) is, in my opinion, one of the more clear-eyed examinations of MBE's life, and contains much useful material about the condition and expectations for women in the latter part of nineteenth-century America. Taking essentially no stand on whether or not MBE posessed a special healing ability, and making no judgements about her religion, this biography examines MBE as a person and, later, a public figure. It's one of those books where you'll find yourself spending as much time reading the footnotes as the text itself.

Since so much as been written about Mary Baker Eddy in biographical printed works, and so much is available on the web, the purpose here is only to provide links and pointers to some of the more objective, comprehensive sources of information. I don't anticipate this article becoming a sort of biographical sketch (like over in Wikipedia), as that would only be redundant.Pat Palmer (talk) 17:33, 27 July 2020 (UTC)