Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition

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Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition
Author Ernest Sutherland Bates and John V. Dittemore
Country United States
Language English
Subject Mary Baker Eddy and The First Church of Christ, Scientist
GenreNon-fiction, Biography
Publisher
Pages476
OCLC 1199769

Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (1932) is a biography of Mary Baker Eddy by Ernest Sutherland Bates, an American academic, and John V. Dittemore, a former director of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Contents

Content

Based on several trunks' worth of primary-source material to which Dittemore had access, the book is a detailed account of the life and work of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of The First Church of Christ, Scientist. It was first published in New York by A. A. Knopf. Reviewing the book in 1933, Richard H. Shryock wrote: "Step by step, critically, inexorably, the authors complete the case against this greatest of modern 'health-cultists'. Their very restraint makes it the more terrible." [1] According to Gillian Gill, the book was heavily influenced by Georgine Milmine's The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science , while at the same time publishing a significant amount of previously unpublished material. [2] Gill writes that while the book corrects many of the inaccuracies in Milmine and Edwin Franden Dakin's biographies of Eddy, particularly that of Dakin's, and became "invaluable source material for later biographers", she also notes there are still "factual inaccuracies" in the Bates and Dittemore's book. [3]

Later, the church bought the copyright and publisher's plates of the book from A. A. Knopf, but has never reissued it, leading to accusations of suppression. [4]

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Georgine Milmine Welles Adams best known as Georgine Milmine, was a Canadian-American journalist most known for writing about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Milmine, along with Willa Cather and others, worked on 14 investigative articles about Eddy that were published by McClure's in 1907–1908. One of the only major investigative works on Eddy to be published in her lifetime, besides Sibyl Wilbur's Human Life articles, the articles were instigated by Milmine: S. S. McClure purchased her freelance research before assigning a group of reporters to verify, expand and write it up.

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John V. Dittemore

John Valentine Dittemore was director of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Christian Science church, in Boston from 1909 until 1919. Before that he was head of the church's Committee on Publication in New York, and a trustee for ten years of the estate of Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), the founder of the church. Dittemore is best known as the co-author, with Ernest Sutherland Bates, of Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (1932).

James Henry Wiggin

James Henry Wiggin was a Unitarian minister. He also worked as an editor and proofreader.

Edwin Franden Dakin was an American advertising executive and author.

Sibyl Wilbur American journalist and feminist author

Sibyl Wilbur O'Brien Stone, best known as Sibyl Wilbur, was an American journalist, suffragist, and author of a biography of Mary Baker Eddy. She was a San Diego Branch Member of the National League of American Pen Women and a member of the New England Woman's Press Association.

Samuel Putnam Bancroft, also known as Samuel P. Bancroft, was an American Christian Scientist and an early student of Mary Baker Eddy.

Adam H. Dickey Christian Science practitioner and teacher

Adam Herbert Dickey, was an author, member of the Board of Directors of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and a secretary to Mary Baker Eddy.

References

  1. Shryock, Richard H. (1933). "Review of Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 20 (1): 134–136. doi:10.2307/1902362. JSTOR   1902362.
  2. Gill, Gillian (1998). Mary Baker Eddy. Perseus Books, pp. 567, 575-576.
  3. Gill 1998, p. 579.
  4. Gill, Gillian (1998). Mary Baker Eddy. Perseus Books, p. 579, citing Braden, Charles S. (1958). Christian Science Today: Power, Policy, Practice. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, pp. 384–385.

Further reading