Resources Discussing Georgine Milmine

Luey structures her portrayal of eight famous residents of Massachusetts, including Mary Baker Eddy, around their famous homes. She covers Eddy’s childhood in Bow and Tilton homes; her struggles with poverty and illness in North Groton and renting rooms in various boarding houses; her first purchased home in Lynn, and her last two homes: Pleasant View in Concord, NH and Chestnut Hill in Boston.

Squires sees the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library as an opportunity for literary scholars to give closer attention to the history, doctrines, and distinctions of Christian Science. Only then will there be an honest and accurate account for the literature that seeks to represent or critique them. 

Damaging newspaper accounts incentivized Mary Baker Eddy to found The Christian Science Monitor with the intent to be a more professional alternative sticking closely to facts and highlighting optimism rather than fear. Although this approach helped dampen the polemic around the church, critics found it lacking in illuminating systemic societal abuses of power.

Squires’s research resolves the controversial claims to authorship of the 1907 polemic series in McClure’s, “The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.” Squires finds that Willa Cather never took ownership of it, but the multi-authorship makes the relationship among all contributors ambiguous. The work should be understood in the context of the raging public debates at the time.

Gottschalk, an intellectual historian, left his post at the Christian Science Committee on Publication in 1990, uncomfortable with the leadership of the Church. Still considered a leading Christian Science scholar despite his criticism, he conducted extensive archival research for this book. Gottshcalk focuses on the last two decades of Eddy’s life and her effort to protect and perpetuate her religious teaching.

Jenkins argues that the cult problem of today is the product of cultural and political work and that Christian Science, with associated mind-cure movements, has been the primary target of cult critics. He joins the attacks by asserting (falsely): “Most pernicious, Christian Science denied the Virgin Birth, the miracles of Christ, the Atonement, and the Resurrection.” (60)  

Gill, a feminist historian and biographer, offers a fresh view of Mary Baker Eddy’s achievements in the light of obstacles faced by women in her time. Without access to Church archives Gill relied on Peel’s archival research. Gill’s unique contribution challenges the traditional biographers’ view of Eddy as a hysterical invalid who abandoned her son and stole her ideas.

This 1930 biography on Mary Baker Eddy appears in this contemporary bibliography because of its role in Christian Science history. Without access to church archives and drawing on others who discredited her, Dakin’s biography reads like a conspiracy theory against Eddy. An important comparison can be made between Dakin’s and Lyman Powell’s biographies of the same year. 

Johnson’s eye-witness account explains Mary Baker Eddy’s decisions during the period in which she established her church. Succeeding generations have wondered why Eddy created a church with a self-perpetuating Board of Directors and how some of her followers, such as Nixon, Woodbury, and Foster-Eddy posed such threats to the church. He discusses Eddy’s responses to internal power struggles within the movement.

This 1993 biography of Mary Baker Eddy is a reprint of the hostile original public domain book, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science, by Georgine Milmine. Until this reprint appeared, authorship of the book had been attributed solely to Milmine; however, Cather’s involvement in the series was greater than she chose to admit.

Wilbur began writing about Mary Baker Eddy in Human Life Magazine in December 1906, countering articles published about Christian Science and Eddy in the New York World newspaper. In response to Georgine Milmine’s series in McClure’s Magazine a few months later, Wilbur wrote her own series. This work has been criticized for its overly sympathetic tone and recurrent lack of documentation.