Gillian Gill is the author of a recent biography, Mary Baker Eddy (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, Radcliffe Biography Series, 1998). Dr. Gill has taught at Wellesley College and Yale University, and has been a contributing lecturer in the Radcliffe Seminars and in the literature programs at Harvard University. She is currently at work on Nightingales, the story of Florence Nightingale and her extended family. Recently, she returned to the topic of her earlier biography to share some of her thoughts about Mrs. Eddy with the staff of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity. This article is compiled from transcribed excerpts of those interviews.
Mrs. Eddy isn't just historically important. Her life offers us some blueprints for life in the 21st century. There is a difference between Mrs. Eddy and some of her great female contemporaries. I'm thinking of Clara Barton, Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These are some of the great names of the 19th century — women who did not just have achievements, but who also achieved fame. To me, Mrs. Eddy is different from them because she lives directly in the present.
SHE FOUNDED A MOVEMENT that is still with us. She has written a book that is not just being read out of historical interest, but because it's still one of those books that changes peoples lives, as lives were changed by reading that book in the 19th century. So Mrs. Eddy is a continuing presence.
