McClure’s Magazine Series by Georgine Milmine

The McClure’s Magazine series refers to a series of hostile and inflammatory articles about Mary Baker Eddy researched and drafted by Georgine Milmine and published in 14 installments in McClure’s Magazine (1893-1929) beginning with an editorial announcement of the series in December 1906 and concluding in June 1908. McClure’s, one of the most popular and influential periodicals of its time, is credited with launching journalism’s “muckraking” era, which was marked by lengthy, in-depth exposés of corruption, injustice, and inequity in government, business, and social contexts with an intent to shape public opinion and spark reform.

Milmine was a relatively unknown New York journalist who originally intended to include Eddy in a series of articles celebrating influential American women. However, her early research led her to attorney Frederick William Peabody, one of Eddy’s most ardent and impassioned detractors. Peabody had represented Josephine Curtis Woodbury in an unsuccessful libel lawsuit against Eddy in 1899 and would later represent the plaintiffs in the unsuccessful “Next Friends” lawsuit of 1907, claiming that Eddy was not competent to manage her own affairs. Milmine was impressed by Ida M. (Ida Minerva) Tarbell’s investigative reporting of Standard Oil Company that was published in a McClure's series from 1902 to 1904 and, having been turned against Eddy by Peabody, determined to write about Eddy in a similar fashion.

Milmine spent several years (most likely between 1903 and 1906) researching and collecting legal documents, newspaper articles, letters, and photographs relative to Eddy’s life and work, as well as conducting interviews–mostly with disaffected former students and early associates of Eddy’s, some of whom were paid by McClure’s for providing negative accounts. After Milmine turned her materials and early drafts over to McClure's, her involvement with the project was limited. Although her name was listed in the byline, her drafts were largely rewritten by staff editors, including Willa Cather, Burton J. (Burton Jesse) Hendrick, and Will Irwin. The resulting published articles portrayed Eddy as an eccentric, temperamental, deceptive, and autocratic leader who had substantially plagiarized her written work. They were subsequently compiled into a book titled The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science, published in 1909.

The McClure’s articles and resulting book were deeply polarizing with the public, reinforcing the views of Eddy’s skeptics and prompting an outpouring of counter-accounts by Eddy’s loyal students and supporters. One important defender was journalist Sibyl Wilbur, who had met and interviewed Eddy for an article in the Boston Herald in 1905. Wilbur sought to refute the McClure’s articles by publishing her own monthly series of 13 articles about Eddy in Human Life magazine between December 1906 and December 1907. This series became the basis for Wilbur’s book, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (1908), which was the first published biography of Eddy. After initial reluctance, Eddy later issued a public statement supporting the publication and circulation of Wilbur’s book.