"The story of the 1890s scandal in which a young woman named Madeline Pollard sued congressman William Campbell Preston Breckenridge for breach of promise. Pollard won the suit, and the mystery of who helped her pay the extravagant legal expenses in order to bring Breckinridge down illuminates a shift in the sexual politics of the Victorian era"-- Provided by publisher.
Madeline Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard's hand-- then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. Pollard sued Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Miller tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back-- and became an unlikely nineteenth-century women's rights crusader. -- adapted from jacket
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