Thirteen first ladies of the United States have written a total of twenty-two memoirs. The first lady is the hostess of the White House, and the position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, with some historical exceptions. Every memoir by a first lady published in the 20th and 21st centuries has been a bestseller, at times outselling those of their presidential husbands. [1] [2]
In the early 1800s, Abigail Adams had her correspondence published as Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams , and Louisa Adams "made several attempts at an autobiography", though she never sought to publish them. [1] The Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United States were published in 1886 but were actually edited by Lucia Cutts and written by Dolley Madison's niece Mary Cutts. [note 1] [4]
Julia Grant was the first to write and attempt to publish her memoirs, writing The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant in the 1890s after the death of her husband Ulysses S. Grant. However, she never found a suitable publisher for them before her death in 1902, in part because she had unrealistic expectations of their value. The memoirs were eventually published in 1975. [5] Helen Taft was the first to have memoirs published during her lifetime, in 1914. [1] Memoirs by presidential spouses were uncommon until the 1970s; in the decades after Taft, only Edith Wilson, Grace Coolidge, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson wrote and published their memoirs. [2] Coolidge had her memoirs published in the 1930s as several articles in The American Magazine . [4] Most first ladies have written and published at least one memoir about their life since Betty Ford's publication of her first memoir in the late 1970s. [2]
Early published memoirs focused on relatively trivial matters, often largely focusing on the first lady's personal life. Helen Taft's memoirs were described by The New York Sun as "bright, witty, delightfully entertaining reminiscences" upon publication, and Edith Wilson's My Memoir was criticized by contemporary reviewers such as The New York Times for excessively focusing on clothing and social events. [6] [7] Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote four autobiographies, marked a shift in the content of the memoirs, writing more about political issues and less on her personal life. Lady Bird Johnson condensed a dictated two-million-word transcript into 300,000 for A White House Diary , which outsold her husband Lyndon B. Johnson's memoir. [6] In the 1960s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was involved in editing two books by Molly Thayer, Jacqueline Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years. [4]
Memoirs written by Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter and Barbara Bush also outsold the memoirs of their husbands. [1] My Turn by Nancy Reagan, published in 1989, was nicknamed My Burn for its "vengeful" coverage of Reagan's life, particularly in the White House. The book sold very well, remaining on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than three months. [6] [8] Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming was published in 2018. She received over $60 million in advance of publication, and the book had sold over 11.5 million copies as of November 2019 [update] . [9] [10] There has been speculation that Melania Trump is writing a memoir or in talks to do so. [11] [12]
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The Cutts–Madison House is an American colonial-style historic home, now used for offices located at 1520 H Street NW in Washington, D.C. The house is best known for being the residence of former First Lady Dolley Madison, who lived there from November 1837 until her death in July 1849.
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The Dolley Madison Digital Edition (DMDE) is a digital comprehensive edition of the correspondence and ancillary documents of Dolley Payne Todd Madison. Rotunda, the electronic imprint of the University of Virginia Press, published the first installment of the edition in 2004; the final installment will appear in the Fall of 2021. The DMDE includes over 3,500 documents and 5,000 unique identifications of people, places, terms, and titles. The edition won the 2020 Lyman H. Butterfield Award from the Association for Documentary Editing. The DMDE was the first publication of Rotunda and is now available as part of Rotunda's American Founding Era Collection, where it can be included in searches across the entire collection alongside the papers of the founders.
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Catherine Allgor is an American historian focusing on women and early American history; she has written and lectured extensively on Dolley Madison and the founding generation of American women. Since 2017 she has served as the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Previously Allgor was appointed to the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation by President Barack Obama and has served as the Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Formerly she was a Professor of History and UC Presidential Chair at the University of California, Riverside, and has taught at Claremont McKenna College, Harvard University, and Simmons University. Allgor was a Frances Perkins Scholar at Mount Holyoke College and received her PhD from Yale University where she was awarded the Yale Teaching Award. Her dissertation was awarded best dissertation in American history at Yale and received the Lerner-Scott Prize for the Best Dissertation in U.S. Women's History.
Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts was an American socialite, amateur historian, and memoirist. She exchanged letters frequently with Dolley Madison and, after Madison's death in 1849, spent the last seven years of her life writing and attempting to publish two memoirs. The memoirs included biographical information on Madison and were published in 1886 as the heavily edited Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United States by Lucia B. Cutts. The work was the standard on Madison's life for over a century.