Overview

A historical biography of a radical relationship at the dawn of the 20th Century. The opening years of the twentieth century saw a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor picket lines and at women's suffrage rallies but also in homes and bedrooms. In the thick of this heady milieu were Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, two aspiring poets whose love story uncovers a potent emotional world underneath this transformative time. Self-declared pioneers in free love, Sara and Erskine exchanged hundreds of letters that charted a new kind of romantic relationship, and their personal pursuits frequently came into contact with their deeply engaged political lives. As Sara's star rose in the suffrage movement, culminating in her making a cross-country car trip in 1915 and gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures for a petition to Congress, she began to ask questions about her own power in her relationship with Erskine. Charting a passionate and tumultuous relationship that spanned decades, Bohemians West offers a deeply personal look at a dynamic period in American history.

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9781597145169

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Reviews

Bohemians West is written with elan for general readers. But it also reflects Smith's impeccable scholarship; historical context weaves tightly through tales of radicalism and romance. --Western Historical Quarterly An unconventional biography that reads like fiction, Sherry Smith's Bohemians West traces a twentieth-century sojourn with alternative romance. Although the portrait of America's decades-long transformation through modernity may draw interest on its own--with the complex interplay of new radicals, old conservatives, industrialism, war, and impending recession--it is the even more complex magnetism between Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood that makes each page turn itself. --Pacific Historical Review [A] nuanced, well-written portrait. ... Readers will find the radical relationship at the center of this fine-grained account both frustrating and fascinating. --Publishers Weekly Bohemians West is not your typical biography, reading comparable to a romantic dual history of two extraordinary individuals. The author captures the spirit of the atypical romance, reflecting on the times in which they played out. ... Superb work. --San Francisco Book Review This is a wild, alluring tale of radical sex meeting up with radical history during the most radical decades of the twentieth century--told with admirable sympathy for both of its larger-than-life principals. --Vivian Gornick This irresistible story weaves a tale of passionate love together with one woman's efforts at liberation within a compelling portrait of progressive culture in the early twentieth-century American West. What arises in these pages is a uniquely complex portrait of the sexual revolution, both its ideals and contradictions. And to say Bohemians West makes history come alive is an understatement. You won't want to put this book down. --Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her In his youth one member of this remarkable couple met Ulysses Grant; in her old age, the other talked with the man who introduced Zen Buddhism to America in the 1950s and '60s, Alan Watts. In between, an amazing collection of people passed through their lives, from Clarence Darrow (who introduced them) and Lincoln Steffens to Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman. Sherry L. Smith does a splendid job of bringing this cast of characters to life. --Adam Hochschild, author of Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes Sherry Smith is a scholar whose books read like the best fiction, character-driven page-turners. In Bohemians West, Smith takes the reader on a journey with two of the most interesting characters we have never heard of, who were among the thousands of literary figures and activists who were ahead of their time. In the compelling story of Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, we meet their better-known acquaintances, anarchist Emma Goldman, poet Robinson Jeffers, Mark Twain, birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger, radical lawyer Clarence Darrow. Through these real-life characters, Smith brilliantly tells a deep history of the first half of the twentieth century, and in doing so sheds light on our present. --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Bohemians West invites readers into a new understanding of some key early-twentieth-century figures of artistic and political dissent. These daring pioneers could be found not only in New York but even in staid Portland, Oregon; their free love was both theory and practice, their entanglements producing hurt and jealousy but also new form of freedom and loyalty; their sexual radicalism, at times self-indulgent, often strengthened their commitment to social-justice campaigns, notably for woman suffrage and free speech. Luckily, the protagonists of this study, Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, left a vast trove of intimate letters. Deftly integrated by Sherry Smith, Bohemians West reads like a bodice-ripper novel, while offering a serious reconsideration of American countercultures. --Linda Gordon, winner of two Bancroft Prizes, author of Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits and coauthor of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements This is a beautiful book. It works not only because Sara Bard Field and Erskine Scott Wood are compelling, brilliant and flawed, fearless and naive, but because Sherry Smith cares about getting them right--the intimacy of their love and lives, and the complexity of their time, their passions, and the American West they inhabited and influenced. --William Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West Sherry Smith tells a fascinating story of two lovers who tried to turn passion into principle and instead lived a life of contradiction, turmoil, tragedy, selfishness, adventure, and an ultimate odd contentment. It is a story of sex, love, betrayal, and a relationship whose story illuminates the bohemian and radical West. --Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 It was the scandal of early twentieth-century Portland, Oregon: Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field abandoned their respectable Victorian lives to pursue sexual liberation, modern poetry and painting, and a new morality for a more just society. Their decades-long passion was their greatest work of art, marrying personal liberation with pathbreaking activism for gender equality, civil rights and civil liberties, and labor radicalism. Pulsing with ideas and emotion, Sherry Smith's riveting narrative explores how two unforgettable people found each other and created a set of commitments about living that progressives today would immediately recognize as their own. --Daniel J. Sharfstein, author of Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War The great virtue of this book--an account of the complicated love affair and early twentieth century political radicalism of Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood--is not only that it revives vivid and emblematic personalities who have dropped out of the American historical canon but also that it focuses on issues involving sexual equality and political progressivism as relevant today as they were a century ago. The author of this book is to be commended in particular for not glossing over the fact that sexual equality in 'free, ' nonmarital relationships can be as thorny an issue as it is in marriage. This meticulously researched and passionate account recalls the words of Wood's and Field's contemporary Emma Godman, theanarchist and feminist who memorably wrote, 'Free Love? As if love is anything but free!' --Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism In Bohemians West, Sherry Smith artfully recovers the paradoxical love story of two virtually unknown early twentieth-century radical poets who sought both political and personal liberation alongside such luminaries as Clarence Darrow and Emma Goldman. Smith brilliantly illuminates the pursuit of women's suffrage, free love, labor radicalism, and anarchism over one hundred years ago. But she also shows how her subjects' lives speak so relevantly to our own time and its preoccupations. --Margaret Jacobs, author of White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 In Bohemians West Sherry Smith introduces us to a woman and a man--each fascinating and complicated--to their love as it evolved over decades, and to what both can teach us about America and its West. Through it all she reminds us there have always been those who have found in the West the inspiration to question national platitudes and received wisdoms, and to pursue that questioning with a passion like that Erskine and Sara had for each other. --Elliott West, historian and author of The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story Bohemians West is written in a wholly accessible style that does not forsake critical analysis. Only the most gifted and seasoned of historians can pull off such a feat. --Peter Boag, Oregon Historical Quarterly

This is a wild, alluring tale of radical sex meeting up with radical history during the most radical decades of the twentieth century--told with admirable sympathy for both of its larger-than-life principals. --Vivian Gornick This irresistible story weaves a tale of passionate love together with one woman's efforts at liberation within a compelling portrait of progressive culture in the early twentieth-century American West. What arises in these pages is a uniquely complex portrait of the sexual revolution, both its ideals and contradictions. And to say Bohemians West makes history come alive is an understatement. You won't want to put this book down. --Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her In his youth one member of this remarkable couple met Ulysses Grant; in her old age, the other talked with the man who introduced Zen Buddhism to America in the 1950s and '60s, Alan Watts. In between, an amazing collection of people passed through their lives, from Clarence Darrow (who introduced them) and Lincoln Steffens to Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman. Sherry L. Smith does a splendid job of bringing this cast of characters to life. --Adam Hochschild, author of Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes Sherry Smith is a scholar whose books read like the best fiction, character-driven page-turners. In Bohemians West, Smith takes the reader on a journey with two of the most interesting characters we have never heard of, who were among the thousands of literary figures and activists who were ahead of their time. In the compelling story of Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, we meet their better-known acquaintances, anarchist Emma Goldman, poet Robinson Jeffers, Mark Twain, birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger, radical lawyer Clarence Darrow. Through these real-life characters, Smith brilliantly tells a deep history of the first half of the twentieth century, and in doing so sheds light on our present. --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Bohemians West invites readers into a new understanding of some key early-twentieth-century figures of artistic and political dissent. These daring pioneers could be found not only in New York but even in staid Portland, Oregon; their free love was both theory and practice, their entanglements producing hurt and jealousy but also new form of freedom and loyalty; their sexual radicalism, at times self-indulgent, often strengthened their commitment to social-justice campaigns, notably for woman suffrage and free speech. Luckily, the protagonists of this study, Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, left a vast trove of intimate letters. Deftly integrated by Sherry Smith, Bohemians West reads like a bodice-ripper novel, while offering a serious reconsideration of American countercultures. --Linda Gordon, winner of two Bancroft Prizes, is the author of Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits and coauthor of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements This is a beautiful book. It works not only because Sara Bard Field and Erskine Scott Wood are compelling, brilliant and flawed, fearless and naive, but because Sherry Smith cares about getting them right--the intimacy of their love and lives, and the complexity of their time, their passions, and the American West they inhabited and influenced. --William Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West Sherry Smith tells a fascinating story of two lovers who tried to turn passion into principle and instead lived a life of contradiction, turmoil, tragedy, selfishness, adventure, and an ultimate odd contentment. It is a story of sex, love, betrayal, and a relationship whose story illuminates the bohemian and radical West. --Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 It was the scandal of early twentieth-century Portland, Oregon: Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field abandoned their respectable Victorian lives to pursue sexual liberation, modern poetry and painting, and a new morality for a more just society. Their decades-long passion was their greatest work of art, marrying personal liberation with pathbreaking activism for gender equality, civil rights and civil liberties, and labor radicalism. Pulsing with ideas and emotion, Sherry Smith's riveting narrative explores how two unforgettable people found each other and created a set of commitments about living that progressives today would immediately recognize as their own. --Daniel J. Sharfstein, author of Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War The great virtue of this book--an account of the complicated love affair and early twentieth century political radicalism of Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood--is not only that it revives vivid and emblematic personalities who have dropped out of the American historical canon but also that it focuses on issues involving sexual equality and political progressivism as relevant today as they were a century ago. The author of this book is to be commended in particular for not glossing over the fact that sexual equality in 'free, ' nonmarital relationships can be as thorny an issue as it is in marriage. This meticulously researched and passionate account recalls the words of Wood's and Field's contemporary Emma Godman, theanarchist and feminist who memorably wrote, 'Free Love? As if love is anything but free!' --Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism In Bohemians West, Sherry Smith artfully recovers the paradoxical love story of two virtually unknown early twentieth-century radical poets who sought both political and personal liberation alongside such luminaries as Clarence Darrow and Emma Goldman. Smith brilliantly illuminates the pursuit of women's suffrage, free love, labor radicalism, and anarchism over one hundred years ago. But she also shows how her subjects' lives speak so relevantly to our own time and its preoccupations. --Margaret Jacobs, author of White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940

Author Information

Sherry L. Smith is University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. She now lives in Moose, Wyoming and Pasadena, California with her husband, Robert W. Righter (also a historian) and their English Setter named Una. A historian of the American West and Native America, Smith's other books include Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans Through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940, both published by Oxford University Press. She is Past President of the Western History Association and received the L.A. Times Distinguished Fellowship at the Huntington Library, which supported research for Bohemians West. Smith has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Fulbright Foundation, and Yale University's Beinecke Library.

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