Reverend Henry Ward Beecher

The pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York for forty years, the Reverend’s Sunday Sermons were printed and syndicated throughout America and abroad. American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, he was recognized for his support of the abolition of slavery, and his emphasis on God’s love.

Henry Ward Beecher was the eighth progeny of Lyman Beecher, a Calvinist minister who became one of the best-known evangelists of his age. Several of Henry’s brothers and sisters became well-known educators and activists, most notably Harriet Beecher Stowe, who achieved worldwide fame with her abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His oldest sibling, Catherine Beecher, published A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School in 1841, which became the woman’s bible of domestic conduct for the next 40 years.

The Most Famous Man in America

The famous Reverend was a notorious womanizer, with a proclivity to bed and often impregnate the wives, daughters, and sisters of many of the deacons and powerful financial backers of his church. He led the change in Christianity from his father, Lyman Beecher’s fire and brimstone, hell and damnation to emphasize God’s love and redemption through confession of sins to Jesus Christ. The Reverend is best known today as the accused in the “Trial of the Century” in 1875 for adultery and alienation of affections of Libby Tilton, from the Reverend’s protégé, Theodore Tilton.

Volume 2 of The Victoria Woodhull Saga brings Victorian America and the struggle of women to life. The facts amaze, audacity engages, lascivious adventures entertain, and the abuses of power render all of it Scandalous!

Scandalous has won 5 literary awards.