Secret history of wonder woman Jill Lepore ; [with a new afterword]

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lepore, Jill, 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marston, William Moulton, 1893-1947.

Marston, William Moulton.

Wonder Woman (Fictitious character).

Superheroes--Comic books, strips, etc.

Superheroes.

Feminism--United States--History.

Feminism.

Women's rights--United States--History.

Women's rights.

United States.

Genre:

Comics (Graphic works)

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 410 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 25 cm

Edition:

First Vintage books edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Vintage, 2015.

Summary:

"A cultural history of Wonder Woman traces the character's creation and enduring popularity, drawing on interviews and archival research to reveal the pivotal role of feminism in shaping her seven-decade story ... reveals the origin of one of American popular culture's most iconic figures - a story that hides within it not only a fascinating family saga but a crucial history of twentieth-century feminism... Wonder Woman, created in 1941, is the most popular female superhero of all time. Aside from Superman and Batman, no superhero has lasted as long or commanded so vast and wildly passionate a following. In the more than seven decades since she first appeared, her comic books have never been out of print. In years of interviews and archival research, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. Lepore has discovered that, from Marston's days as a Harvard undergraduate, he was influenced by early suffragists and feminists, starting with the British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, who was banned from speaking on campus in 1911, when Marston was a freshman. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife brought into their home, as Marston's mistress, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. The Marston family story - a house of one man, three women, and four children - is a story of drama, intrigue, and irony. In the 1930s, Marston and Sanger's niece together wrote a regular column for Family Circle, celebrating conventional family life, even as they pursued a life of extraordinary nonconformity. No less fascinating is Marston's role as the inventor of the lie detector. Internationally known as an expert on truth, he lived a life of secrets - only to spill them, as if in secret code, on the pages of the Wonder Woman comics he began writing in 1941. The Secret History of Wonder Woman not only explains what has long baffled readers of Wonder Woman - in particular, the role of bondage in Marston's stories - but also reveals that Wonder Woman, a little slinky, and very kinky, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women's rights, a chain of events that begins with the women's suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later" --Publisher's description.

Contents:

Veritas

Family circle

Paradise Island

Great Hera!

I'm back!

Notes:

Includes comics index.

Includes bibliographical references (page 317-389) and index.

ISBN:

0804173400

9780804173407

OCLC:

972682484