Longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography
"Biggers creates a detailed portrait of this dynamic writer and provides historical context for Royall’s life and adventures while maintaining a flowing narrative. Readers will appreciate the depth of his research and greatly enjoy learning Royall’s fascinating story."--Booklist
"...the astonishing life story of the pioneering muckraker Anne Royall...A lively and witty chronicler, Biggers covers Royall’s trial as well as her upbringing in the woods of Appalachia; her marriage to a wealthy landowner and Revolutionary war veteran (they openly lived together before their nuptials); her growth as a writer; and her reinvention as a publisher after her conviction when, at age 62, she launched her own newspaper in Washington, D.C., assisted by orphans—a venture that lasted over two decades. Captivating and thoroughly researched, this work also delves into why Royall was forgotten, noting that “her place in history has not been crafted by her own prolific pen, but by the largely scolding interpretation of others.”--Publishers Weekly, starred review
"In an expanding nation, Royall’s incisive descriptions of American life and individual Americans from many walks of life were popular reading and a sharp contrast to the sentimental literature penned by other female writers."--Wall Street Journal
"As Biggers illuminates Royall’s place in Jacksonian America, you can’t help but notice the parallels between then and now."--BookPage
"A smart and fast-paced biography of Anne Royall...a sharp-witted and often hilarious writer who has until now largely been lost to history."--Jacksonville Journal Courier
Anne Royall was an American original, a stranger to fear, who defied 19th century skeptics as a prolific literary force, satirist and social critic.
Publishing her first book at the age of 57 in 1826, Royall reinvented herself as a “women politico” a generation before the Women's Suffrage Movement, a pioneering travel writer and satirist who broke ground on the wagon trails a generation before Mark Twain, an investigative journalist who took on bankers and prison conditions a half century before muckrakers Ida Tarbell and Nellie Bly. She became the author of 10 original books, and publisher of a newspaper in Washington, DC for 25 years until the age of 85.
One of the most famous, sharp-witted and controversial women of her times, Royall was raised in the backwoods of the South with one of the great libraries in the region, openly cohabitated with her husband prior to their wedding, and then left widowed and destitute after her husband’s family declared their marriage invalid. Turning to writing as she traveled from Alabama to Washington DC and then across the country, Royall acquired fame and then enemies for her scathing and hilarious denouncements of corruption, incompetence and the blurry lines between church and state.
With unsparing satire, her pioneering role as a chronicler, publisher, muckraker, and social commentator brought to light the timeless issues that still define the great American experience: religion and politics, and freedom of the press.
Drawing from Royall's largely overlooked literary works, Trials of a Scold is a groundbreaking and passionate biography of Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, who was convicted as a "common scold" in 1829 in one of the most bizarre trials in the nation's history.
Read an excerpt in Smithsonian Magazine: The 19th-Century Woman Journalist Who Made Congress Bow Down in Fear .
Read an excerpt in Lapham's Quarterly, How to Treat a Common Scold.
Read an article on Women Writers as Scolds, Again, in the History Reader.
Read an article on BBC Mundo: El grotesco juicio contra Anne Royall, una de las lenguas más temidas del siglo XIX.
Listen to an interview with Jeff Biggers on Iowa Public Radio's River to River program on Anne Royall and Trials of a Scold.
Read an interview on the back story of writing Anne Royall in The Gazette.
Reviews
"A contemporary of Alexander Hamilton, Anne Royall deserves her own musical. Short of that we have Jeff Biggers' wonderful exploration of what made her the most despised woman of her time, originator of the term “redneck" and an exemplary journalist who had to fight off charges that she was a “common scold” and an evil person. We forget that in her time that was actually an actionable charge and that she could have been sent to prison for speaking the truth and addressing the misbehavior and outrages of the powerful men of her age. That she managed to write with a wicked sense of humor made her all the more dangerous—as well as a role model for those of us living in the age of Trump. Jeff Biggers is a wonderful writer and almost as brave as his role model—the incomparable Anne Royall." --Dorothy Allison, author of the NY Times bestselling novels, Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedweller.
"Major environmentalist and activist Jeff Biggers turns to 18th century America to bring us a surprising story from the mountains of western Virginia―the most interesting woman that I, for one, had never heard of, despite my own Appalachian heritage. A true pioneer in every way, the muckraking and myth-making journalist, travel writer, and social critic Anne Royall was called both 'heroine' and 'common scold' in her time; her story holds reverberations and implications for us today."―Lee Smith, author of Dimestore: A Writer's Life
"God bless the intemperate muckraker! God bless the courageous truth teller who speaks for the the poor, the abused, and exploited rather than currying favor with the rich, the powerful and self-righteous! God bless the pointed wit of their sharpened tongues! How hard it is to be the often shot messenger! They save us from our habitual cruelty, denial and hypocrisy. Anne Royall was once such and suffered greatly for her passion for justice. Jeff Biggers should be honored for telling her tale and reminding us in this age of the corporate press what a truly free press can be when practiced by a person like Anne."--Robert Shetterly, artist, Americans Who Tell the Truth
"Anne Royall is a marvelous subject, a bold eighteenth-century woman writer with a stinging wit and a contrarian approach. Challenging, intrepid, and unconventional, she played an important part in American cultural history."―Roxana Robinson, author of four New York Times Notable Books of the Year, including Georgia O'Keefe: A Life
"Trials of a Scold is a fascinating account of a woman who defied nineteenth-century societal constraints to attain national prominence and power as a muckraking journalist. But there is much more to her life and to her story, and in Jeff Biggers’ capable hands she is fully realized. Trials of a Scold does what only the best biographies do: blend meticulous research into a narrative that reads like a novel."--Ron Rash, author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall
"Biggers, an American Book Award–winning journalist, resurrects the astonishing life story of the pioneering muckraker Anne Royall (1769–1854). Though now little known, Royall was a groundbreaking traveler, agitator, and journalist, known for her cutting commentary on both church and state and on the blurred boundaries between the two. Biggers sets his larger-than-life subject in the context of her times, showing how her infamous trial for being a “common scold” resulted from her passion for “free thought, free speech and a free press” colliding with the surge of evangelicalism in the late 1820s. A lively and witty chronicler, Biggers covers Royall’s trial as well as her upbringing in the woods of Appalachia; her marriage to a wealthy landowner and Revolutionary war veteran (they openly lived together before their nuptials); her growth as a writer; and her reinvention as a publisher after her conviction when, at age 62, she launched her own newspaper in Washington, D.C., assisted by orphans—a venture that lasted over two decades. Captivating and thoroughly researched, this work also delves into why Royall was forgotten, noting that “her place in history has not been crafted by her own prolific pen, but by the largely scolding interpretation of others.”--Publishers Weekly
"The tale is almost certainly apocryphal, and Royall’s biographer, Jeff Biggers, neatly debunks it in “The Trials of a Scold.” True or not, the story captures the spirit of this unconventional woman, who took up journalism late in life and then contended with some of the most powerful political and religious figures of her day. In 1891, nearly a half-century after Royall’s death, a headline in the Washington Post proclaimed: “She was a Holy Terror: Her Pen was as Venomous as a Rattlesnake’s Fangs.” What journalist, now or then, would not want to be remembered as a holy terror?"--Wall Street Journal