From Publishers Weekly
This edition containing two autobiographical writings inaugurates a new series of Eddy's unpublished writings. The two selections are Retrospection and Introspection, published in its final form in 1891, and Footprints Fadeless, composed in 1901-02 but published here for the first time. In the earlier memoir, Eddy ranges over remembered events in her life while at the same time turning inward to reflect on those events. She also defends herself against charges that she plagiarized one of her teachers, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. Footprints Fadeless is less a memoir than it is Eddy's attempt to defend herself against a trenchant critic. Riess, PW's religion book editor, offers a splendid introduction that sets Eddy's life and work within late 19th-century American religion and society. Reminding us that Eddy was as much a woman of her time as a woman ahead of her time, Riess deftly draws a portrait of the 19th-century American religious and social currents in which Eddy swam. In addition, her introduction offers a helpful examination of spiritual autobiography and a discussion of the elements of the genre that Eddy's writings incorporate. These two memoirs provide a fresh glimpse of the founder of Christian Science.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
Making some of Mary Baker Eddy's autobiographical writings available for the first time, the Title offers a candid look at a remarkable life. Here, Eddy tells her own story - tells it as no one else can. With a probing and insightful introduction by Jana K. Riess, religion book review editor for "Publisher's Weekly," this volume promises to take a prominent place in the growing genre of women's spiritual memoir.