Try free for 30 days

  • Heaven’s Bride

  • The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman
  • By: Eric Leigh Schmidt
  • Narrated by: Brice Lewis
  • Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Heaven’s Bride cover art

Heaven’s Bride

By: Eric Leigh Schmidt
Narrated by: Brice Lewis
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $27.99

Buy Now for $27.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

The 19th-century eccentric Ida C. Craddock was by turns a secular freethinker, a religious visionary, a civil-liberties advocate, and a resolute defender of belly-dancing. Arrested and tried repeatedly on obscenity charges, she was deemed a danger to public morality for her candor about sexuality. By the end of her life, Craddock, the nemesis of the notorious vice crusader Anthony Comstock, had become a favorite of free-speech defenders and womens rights activists. She soon became as well the case-history darling of one of America's earliest and most determined Freudians.

In Heaven's Bride, prize-winning historian Leigh Eric Schmidt offers a rich biography of this forgotten mystic, who occupied the seemingly incongruous roles of yoga priestess, suppressed sexologist, and suspected madwoman. In Schmidt's evocative telling, Craddock's story reveals the beginning of the end of Christian America, a harbinger of spiritual variety and sexual revolution.

©2010 Leigh Eric Schmidt (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"Leigh Schmidt offers us a compulsively readable account of the tragic, fantastic, and utterly idiosyncratic life of Ira Craddock, self-taught scholar, mystic, sex reformer, and psychoanalytic subject. Sympathetic toward Craddock, yet even-handed in his treatment of both her admirers and her vehemently critical detractors, Schmidt opens a window on the fierce ideological cross-currents at the intersection of sexuality, psychology, and religion at the turn of the last century. This is serious scholarship in a form that everyone can enjoy." (Ann Taves, Professor of Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara)
"The mix of madness and method in Ida Craddock’s extraordinary life makes for a rollicking read, amplified by exactingly researched context. Was she a century ahead of her time? You decide." (Nancy F. Cott, Trumbull Professor of American History, Harvard University)

What listeners say about Heaven’s Bride

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.