Bringing down the Colonel : a sex scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "powerless" woman who took on Washington /
Madeline Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard's hand, then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. Pollard sued Breckinridge for breach of promise in a sho...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
[2018]
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Madeline Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard's hand, then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. Pollard sued Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable, that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Miller tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back, and became an unlikely nineteenth-century women's rights crusader. |
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| Physical Description: | 368 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-348) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780374252663 0374252661 |