The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
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| Author | Debby Applegate |
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| Country | United States |
| Genre | biography |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
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Publication date
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2006 |
| Pages | 527 |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography |
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The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher is a 2006 biography of the 19th-century American minister Henry Ward Beecher, written by Debby Applegate and published by Doubleday. The book describes Beecher's childhood, ministry, support for the abolition of slavery and other social causes, and widely publicized 1875 trial for adultery.
Before publishing the book, Applegate researched and wrote about Beecher for twenty years, starting when she was an undergraduate student at Beecher's alma mater, Amherst College. The book was generally well received by critics. In 2007, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
As an undergraduate student worker at Amherst College, Applegate was assigned to assemble an exhibit on a famous alumnus and selected Beecher. She later wrote about him for her undergraduate senior thesis and made him the subject of her PhD dissertation at Yale University. After graduation, Applegate signed a publishing contract for a biography of Beecher. To write a biography with popular appeal, Applegate studied fiction writing, including techniques for suspense and pornographic writing. She structured the resulting book as a psychological thriller.
Though she had originally hoped to publish the book during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal, in which US President Bill Clinton was discovered to have had a sexual relationship with a White House intern, the research took several years longer than she had initially planned. The book was finally released in 2006 by Doubleday and Three Leaves Press in hardback, paperback, and e-book editions.
The Most Famous Man in America follows the life of 19th-century American minister Henry Ward Beecher. Its introduction describes Beecher's speech at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, at the close of the American Civil War; Beecher was personally invited to speak by President Abraham Lincoln, who commented, "We had better send Beecher down to deliver the address on the occasion of the raising of the flag because if it had not been for Beecher there would have been no flag to raise". Applegate then retells Beecher's sometimes difficult childhood as the son of Lyman Beecher, himself a famous evangelist. Henry was initially overshadowed by his accomplished siblings, who included Harriet Beecher Stowe, later the author of the antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Henry discovered a gift for public speaking and went into the ministry, attending Amherst College and Lane Theological Seminary. He then served as a minister in Lawrenceburg, Indiana and Indianapolis before moving on to the richer post of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York.
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