From the acclaimed author of What the Ermine Saw and Behaving Badly, a portrait of Victoria Woodhull, a celebrated and maligned 19th century businesswoman and activist and a leader in the fight for women’s suffrage and labor reforms.

“Victoria Woodhull provides a thrilling lens through which to interrogate the American dream. Full of twists and turns, Collinsworth’s audacious narration and nuanced understanding of the political machine of Woodhull’s time makes her work a gift for the reader. The Improbable Victoria Woodhull brings history to life with humanity, wit, and impeccable flair.” —Gay Talese, author of Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener

In 1894, a remarkably self-possessed American woman, with no formal education to speak of, stood before a British court seeking damages for libel from the trustees of the British Museum. It was yet another stop along the unpredictable route that was Victoria Woodhull’s life. Born dirt-poor in an obscure Ohio settlement, Woodhull was the daughter of an illiterate mother entranced by the fad of Mesmerism—a therapeutic pseudoscience—and a swindler father whose cons exploited his two daughters. It was through her mother, though, that Woodhull familiarized herself with the supernatural realm, earning a degree of fame as a clairvoyant and her first taste of financial success. Woodhull’s life would continue to turn on its axis and then turn again.

Despite a deeply troubled first marriage at the age of fourteen, countless attempts by the press to discredit her, and a wrongful jail sentence, Woodhull thrived through sheer determination and the strength of her bond with her sister Tennie. She co-founded a successful stock brokerage on Wall Street, launched a newspaper, and became the first woman to run for president. Hers was a rags to riches story that saw her cross paths with Karl Marx, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frederick Douglass. In an era when women’s rights were circumscribed, and the idea of leaving a marriage was taboo, she broke the rules to carve out a path of her own.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Collinsworth tells the story of a woman truly ahead of her time—a radical visionary who made defying mores a habit and brought to the fore societal and political issues still being addressed. Neither a saint nor a villain, Woodhull emerges as an iconic, complex woman: an entrepreneur; lover of freedom; and a fiercely loyal family member whose political activism and suffragist legacy will cement her in history.