Alias Agnes (eBook)

The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy

Elizabeth A. DeWolfe (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
368 Seiten
The University Press of Kentucky (Verlag)
978-1-9859-0225-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Jane Armstrong Tucker was a Boston stenographer scrabbling to get by as a single woman in the Gilded Age, until she was offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Madeleine Pollard was a Kentuckian with humble roots who had used charisma to work her way into the parlors of the Washington, DC, elite. Tucker hid behind an aliasAgnes Parkerbut Pollard had a secret, too.Alias Agnes details thestory of Jane Tucker, who took a job as an undercover detective with a ten-week mission. Her target: Madeleine Pollard, former mistress of Congressman William C. P. Breckinridge, whom she had sued for breach of promise when he failed to marry her. Exploring the intricacies of this trial and a scandal that captivated the nation, author Elizabeth A. DeWolfe demonstrates that a shared lack of power did not always lead to alliances among women. DeWolfe uncovers the strategies women used to make their way in the world, drawing parallels between the previously forgotten and incomplete tales of Tucker, Pollard, and the women who testified in the trialfrom formerly enslaved persons, to white socialites, to single government clerks, to divorced physicians.Written in engaging prose with all the intrigue and suspense of a detective tale, Alias Agnes chronicles the lives of women at the cusp of the twentieth centurythe opportunities that beckoned them and the challenges that thwarted their dreams.

Autor

Elizabeth A. DeWolfe, professor of history and cofounder of the women's and gender studies program at the University of New England, is the award-winning author of The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories and Shaking the Faith: Women, Family, and Mary Marshall Dyer's Anti-Shaker Campaign, 1815–1867.

Inhalt

Author's Note
Prologue
1. Hastily, Jane
2. My Dear Mr. Rodes
3. A Considerable Surprise
4. No Mistakes
5. Pitiful Stories
6. The Stenographer's Guide to Spying
7. So Darned Clever in My Work
8. A Fellow Woman, Ambitious and Smart
9. The Only Chance a Girl Will Get
10. Hems to the Tops of Her Shoes
11. So Like a Woman
12. Happiest Woman in Washington
13. French Dressing
14. Treacherous Typewriters, She-Fanatics, and the Short-Haired Women of Boston
15. The Eve of My Waterloo
16. The Trouble with All Detective Stories
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.4.2025
• Zusatzinfo: 22 b&w illustrations
• Verlagsort: Lexington
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
• Schlagworte: agnes parker • American dream • Breach of promise • detective • Friendship • gender norms • Gilded Age • jane tucker • Kentucky • madeleine pollard • sara gist • scandal • social conventions • Spy • undercover • Washington, DC • william c. p. breckinridge
• ISBN-10: 1-9859-0225-7 / 1985902257
• ISBN-13: 978-1-9859-0225-1 / 9781985902251