Top 25 Books About Polygamy Updated 04 /2024

Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image

Mary Campbell

On September 25, 1890, the Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff told his followers to stop having multiple wives. In doing so, he started a process that would change the Latter-day Saints and their faith in a big way. The Mormons gave up the most important parts of their religion in order to be accepted by the rest of the country.

Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image is a book written by Mary Campbell. She tells the story of how this religious change happened. People in Mormonism love Johnson, one of their best photographers. He took pictures of important people and places in the 1800s, and he did it for a long time, from 1890 to 1902. At the same time, he did a lot of business with mail-order erotica. He made and sold stereoviews he called "spicy pictures of girls." Campbell places these images in the religious, artistic, and legal culture of turn-of-the-century America, and he shows how they worked to bring the Saints into the mainstream after the scandal of polygamy.

Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image is a book that is both interesting and well-researched. It shows how important pictures were in the creation of both the modern Church and the modern world.

Exposé of Polygamy: A Lady's Life Among the Mormons

Fanny Stenhouse

In 1872, Fanny Stenhouse became a big star in the cultural wars between Mormons and a lot of people in the rest of the country because of her book, "Expose." As an English convert, she became unhappy with the Mormon Church and polygamy, which her husband did. She joined a group of dissident Utah intellectuals and businesses before becoming friends with them. A critical look at plural marriage, Brigham Young, and Mormonism was also a kind look at Utah's people and an honest look at her own life. After a while, she came up with a new title for her book, "Tell It All," which made her famous in Utah and popular all over the world, but it turned her thoughtful memoir into a more controversial, true expose of Polygamy. Since 1874, it has been in print in many different editions. However, the original book is less well-known, but it is also easier to read. Linda DeSimone traces the literary history of Stenhouse's important piece of Americana, and she saves an important autobiographical and historical record from the baggage that fame brought to it.

A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890

Christine Talbot

Years from 1852 to 1890 were a very controversial time in Mormonism, because the church officially supported polygamy. This was at odds with the rest of American culture at the time. Study: Christine Talbot talks about how plural marriage led to decades of cultural and political conflict over different ideas about what marriage should be, how families should be set up, and what it means to be an American.

Talbot, for example, looks at the "Mormon question" and how it shaped ideas about American citizenship based on the idea that the public and private spheres are separate. Mormons thought about religion as a political act, not just a private one. Women were able to vote, and they thought about religious practice as a way to make a difference in the world. How Mormonism broke down the public/private line led white, middle-class Americans to attack not just Mormon sexual and marriage norms but also Mormons' very ability to be American citizens. Before and after Mormonism, this book looks at how the two groups thought about the country's body politic, citizenship, gender, the family, and American culture in general. It also looks at how Mormons thought about these things, but also how anti-Mormons thought about them.

Legalizing Plural Marriage: The Next Frontier in Family Law

Mark Goldfeder

Polygamous marriages are now legal in about 50 countries around the world. Polygamy is illegal in the United States, but some religious groups and a growing number of "poly" groups still practice it. It's time to define polygamous marriage and figure out how it could work legally. We live in a world that is rapidly changing and becoming more and more multicultural. He says that after same-sex marriage, polygamy is the next step in the development of U.S. family law. Mark Goldfeder doesn't say whether or not polygamy is right or wrong. He gives us a road map for how this could be done, and he talks about the legislative and administrative arguments that show that plural marriage isn't as far-fetched as we think. Goldfeder says that not only is polygamy in line with the legislative values and freedoms of the United States, but it would also be easy to manage or run in our current legal system. His legal analysis is filled with examples of plural marriage from different cultures and times. In this book, you'll learn about polygamy in the United States from a legal point of view. If you're interested in constitutional law, family law, or criminal law, this book is for you.

Mormons in Paris: Polygamy on the French Stage, 1874-1892

Corry Cropper

In the late 1800s, many French plays, novels, cartoons, and works of art were about Mormons. French dramatists, on the other hand, used Mormonism to point out the hypocrisy in their own culture, unlike American authors who made Mormons out to be bad people. Aren't Mormon women more free than French women who can't divorce because they have more people in their home? Polygamy is just another word for having a lot of mistresses, right? Mormons in Paris, Berthelier Meets the Mormons, Japheth's Twelve Wives, and Stephana's Jewel were all staged or published in France in the late 1800s. This new critical edition includes translations of all four of them (1892). Each has a short introduction that tells you about the music, playwrights, and staging. These plays, which aren't very well known, use Mormonism to look at and mock changes in French culture during the Third Republic. They make fun of changes in attitudes and laws about marriage, divorce, and gender roles.

Nauvoo Polygamy: "…but we called it celestial marriage"

George D. Smith

This is a very well-researched and well-written book about Mormon polygamy. It doesn't seem like the author is taking sides in this complicated mix of religion and practice. Instead, he or she has written what may be the best book on polygamy out there. I think it's great. It was co-authored by Linda King Newell and Emma Hale Smith: Mormon Enigma. It was written by Newell and Smith.

'Nauvoo Polygamy' is an in-depth look at sexual politics in the City of the Saints, where the Mormons lived in the United States in the 1840s. A major contribution to Mormon history, it was written with precision, clarity, and ease. It helped identify other polygamists who took after their prophet, Joseph Smith, by taking multiple partners. For example: Professor Emeritus of History Klaus J. Hansen, who used to work at Queen's University in Ontario, is now out of work.

Even if you don't like chapter 6, this book is worth the money because it has chapter 6. There are people like Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Bathsheba Smith who were able to accept polygamy easily, people like Jane Richards who were able to accept it with reservations, and people like Patty Sessions who couldn't stand it at all. Chapter 9 is a bonus because it gives a quick history of polygamous societies in Reformation Europe, talks about similar societies in America, and talks about Orson Pratt's 1852 defense of plural marriage. —Thomas G. Alexander, a history professor at Brigham Young University who is now retired, said this.

George Smith shows how many of the prophet's followers took part in plural marriage during a time when the LDS Church was firmly against it. in an easy-to-read style." Author: Daniel Walker Howe, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his book, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

"Extremely important to the history of polygamy." It lets us see how Joseph Smith's marriages fit into his daily life. The author of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith said this

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