HBO’s popular Big Love series and David Ebershoff’s bestselling novel The 19th Wife stand as evidence that polygamy remains a perennial topic of interest for Mormons and non-Mormons alike. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that scholarly presses with heavily-Mormon themed catalogues continue to publish serious work on the subject. Utah State University Press’s excellent Life Writings of Frontier Women series has once again offered a sterling piece of documentary history with the publication of Post Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff, edited by Lu Ann Taylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder. (more…)

I read lots of Reformation sermons for my forthcoming book, but I had no way to use this extract from Heber C. Kimball’s 9 November 1856 address. I found it so wonderfully strange that I felt compelled to share it. (more…)

In my spare moments this summer, I returned to Pratt’s Autobiography just to see what would strike me. Probably because of my continuing work on Mormon theodicy, my interest in the changing Mormon conceptions of evil and the accompanying shift in apotropaic ritual, I was most interested in several passages dealing with Pratt’s view of evil in the world. (more…)

The following comes from a meeting of a “Special Council” held in Salt Lake on 21 March 1858. It is evidence, among other things, of Brigham Young’s contrarian streak. I’m sure it raised eyebrows 150 years ago, although probably not as many as it would raise today: (more…)

Occasionally we like to provide our readers who may not have the time or inclination to read widely in the scholarly literature of American history or other disciplines with a sampling of what scholars are saying about Mormonism. Today John Demos is in the spotlight. (more…)

David O. McKay performed his first exorcism when he was 25. It was, he wrote in his journal, a day “long to be remembered.” (more…)

Many Mormon scholars have a funny quirk. They refer, in formal scholarly work, to the founder of their faith by his first name. (more…)

The American Academy of Religion has just released its program for the 2008 annual meeting, to be held in Chicago in November. The Mormon Studies Consultation will be holding two sessions this year. (more…)

All of the regular bloggers and readers here at JI are connoisseurs of the variety of treatments that Joseph Smith and the Mormons receive at the hands of historians who are themselves not experts in the field of Mormon studies. Such treatments range from the ridiculous to the not-quite sublime, and coming as they do in broadly-conceived syntheses, they tend to be derivative and rely heavily on a hodgepodge of secondary interpretations (which authors they choose to cite seems often to depend on what they find on the shelves of their institution’s library–lots of Brooke, Quinn and Brodie usually). Pulitzer Prize winning historian Walter A. McDougall’s view of Joseph Smith and early Mormonism in the newly-released second volume of his multi-volume history of the U.S. is surprising in its creativity. (more…)

All of us have by now been made aware of the new movie about Emma Smith. If you’re not up to speed about it yet, please see here for David G.’s excellent review. This post is concerned, not with the film itself, but with the discussion of polygamy that was included in an article in the 11 April edition of the Deseret News. (more…)

This is just a note to point interested readers in the direction of the latest issue of Mormon Historical Studies which contains, among other wonders, a candid and fascinating interview with Thomas Alexander (conducted by former Alexander student David Hall). Even for those of us fortunate enough to count Tom as a mentor, there is plenty of material here that he hasn’t spoken much about before. Check it out.

Everyone reading this blog probably has an opinion about Gerald Lund’s The Work and the Glory series. I know I do. But that is perhaps saved for another post. I actually have some very specific questions in mind. I have heard from multiple sources, always at least second-hand, the following story:

Place: Church History Site (I have heard variants from Kirtland, Nauvoo, and Palmyra)
Setting: Summer tourist rush
Dramatis Personae: Church history guide (usually a senior missionary), idiotic tourist and or a family of same. (more…)

In the summer of 1950, a young Harvard graduate student named Thomas F. O’Dea traveled to Salt Lake City and met with a veritable who’s who of Mormon intellectuals and church leaders. (more…)

In the late fall of 1875, Frank M. Derby sent a note to Brigham Young’s office inquiring about Young’s interest in purchasing the latest masterwork of Derby’s client, Hubert H. Bancroft. Young’s reply, sent out over the signature of his secretary, George Reynolds is pithy but telling. (more…)