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A DIRTY YEAR

Sex, Suffrage, & Scandal

in Gilded Age New York

by Bill Greer

From Chicago Review Press, 2020

A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York, was published in April by Chicago Review Press.  It is a nonfiction narrative of 1872 New York, a city teeming with social upheaval and sexual revolution, and it extends across the East River to the then-independent city of Brooklyn. Through the lives of characters who fascinated the public that year – financier Jim Fisk, presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vice hunter Anthony Comstock, Brooklyn’s beloved preacher Henry Ward Beecher, and more – the issues of the day play out, from rigged elections, everyday shootings, and attacks on the press to sexual impropriety, reproductive rights, and the chasm between rich and poor.

As an election year, 1872 in many ways holds up a mirror to our upcoming election.  And in this centennial year of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, the story covers an extraordinary year for the women’s suffrage movement.

AUTHOR BIO: Bill Greer has spent decades exploring New York. His novel The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan portrays the city’s founding as New Amsterdam. He chaired the New Netherland Institute’s program to establish the New Netherland Research Center in Albany, has received the Institute’s Howard Hageman award, and has spoken on New York history throughout the Hudson Valley. Bill holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.



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