We are pleased to continue our Distinguished Lecture Series with virtual talks this season. Adam Hochschild, author of Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes, will be the featured speaker on Sunday, January 24, 2021 at 4:00 p.m.
The lecture will take place via Zoom. Click here to join the meeting.
Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes is the astonishing but forgotten story of an immigrant sweatshop worker who married an heir to a great American fortune and became one of the most charismatic radical leaders of her time.
Rose Pastor, a Jewish refugee from Russia, arrived in New York City in 1903, by way of London and Cleveland, Ohio, where she had worked in cigar factories since the age of eleven. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. (James Graham Phelps Stokes, known as Graham, was one of nine children of Anson Phelps Stokes and Helen Phelps Stokes, the owners of Shadow Brook.) Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen. Their friends and houseguests included Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Rose stirred audiences to tears and led strikes of restaurant waiters and garment workers. She campaigned alongside the country’s earliest feminists to publicly defy laws against distributing information about birth control, earning her notoriety as “one of the dangerous influences of the country” from President Woodrow Wilson.
By a master of narrative nonfiction, Rebel Cinderella unearths the rich life of a social justice campaigner who was truly ahead of her time.
Adam Hochschild is the author of ten books. King Leopold’s Ghost was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as was To End All Wars. His Bury the Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Now in its 14th season, the Distinguished Lecture Series is organized and hosted by Dr. Jeremy Yudkin. Dr. Yudkin is a resident of the Berkshires and professor of music at Boston University and Oxford University. Every summer at the Lenox Library he presents the pre-concert lectures for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season.
All programs in the Distinguished Lecture Series are FREE and open to the public thanks to the generosity of the speakers and donors like you. In addition, we are grateful to the Lenox Library Association for its sponsorship of Zoom, which makes these programs possible.