Talk:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science/GA1

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Reviewer: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) 05:04, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • No DABs, multiple problems with external links. Please add subscription required for all jstor articles. Dead link to the Mary Baker Eddy library. Run the external link checker for yourself to see what I mean.
  • Images appropriately licensed.
  • which became Christian Science's main religious text, lent heavily, and perhaps plagiarized, the then-unpublished Missing a word, I think.
  • Why are Milmine's marriages important here?
  • What was Stouck referring to in that statement that he added to the book? This goes to the reliability of the book as a source for Eddy's life. You cover some of that in the General reception paragraph, but I'd like to see more.
  • If the church tried to stop the 1993 republishing, what about the 1971 edition?

More later.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:53, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the comments. Replies:
  • I've fixed the dead link, but prefer not to add subscription-required notes.
  • The sentence is: "The authors also report allegations that Eddy's major work ... lent heavily, and perhaps plagiarized, the then-unpublished work of ..." But if you think it's unclear I can tweak it.
  • The primary problem the sentence doesn't make sense since Eddy didn't lend a thing to Quimby, but rather borrowed heavily from him. Change this and it will be fine.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, I see now that a word was missing – "lent on," not "lent," but I've changed it to borrowed from, which is better. See below. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:17, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Marriages: no, they're not important. I had so little biographical material about her that I just added what I had. I'll move it to a footnote.
  • That would be fine if you're attached to the info, but unless she's notable on her own, I, as the reader, could care less.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stouck: the Christian Science church put pressure on him to say two things: (1) that the main author might not have been Cather, because they want the main author to have been the unknown Milmine (or, at least, not the well-known and trusted Cather); and (2) the "enemies" they referred to is mentioned in the next section:
"According to Gill, the McClure's articles were affected by the 1908 "Next Friends" lawsuit, which was being prepared during the McClure's serialization. The lawsuit, which did not succeed, was brought by Eddy's relatives, who said that she was unable to manage her own affairs; the result was that she might have lost control of the church and her fortune. The suit was organized in 1907 by Joseph Pulitzer (1847–1911), owner of the New York World (1860–1931); Pulitzer's motive, according to Fraser, was to engineer a story about Eddy to rival that of McClure's.[33] Gill alleged that documents in the possession of the New Hampshire Historical Society show that those involved in the lawsuit were in contact with McClure's, and that both sides were feeding each other information."
Perhaps I should move that higher to make the Stouck point clearer. I don't know what they mean by "New information about Georgine Milmine, moreover, suggests that she would have welcomed biased opinion for its sensational and commercial value." This looks like an attempt to discredit, and as Milmine was not the writer or the main researcher, it somewhat misses its target.
  • I would say that there is, thus far, no substantiation of Stouck's charge about Milmine and that it was probably done to discredit her under pressure from the Church.
  • The 1971 edition: sorry, I have no information about that.
  • Baker Book House made me wonder about some sort of Church connection, either pro or against, although I suspect that the nature of the book would incline me towards against the Church. Pity you don't have anything more, but I guess that's for further research, if you're so minded.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
SlimVirgin (talk) 01:35, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your notes and further reading sections are a bit unconventional, but achieve their purpose. I would ask, though, that you add ISBN or OCLC #s for all the books that you reference in the notes.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, so I've made some fixes:
  • I moved the marriages to a footnote.
  • I've moved Gill's description of the Next Friends lawsuit next to the quote from Stouck, so that we know what he means by "enemies."
  • I've added a quote from the University of Nebraska Press that they felt bullied by the church.
  • I've added an explanation of why Stouck agreed to add the statement that he did (because he feared for the jobs of the church researchers who had helped him).
  • I've added "When the copyright expired, Baker Book House, a Christian publishing house, brought the book out 'in the interest of fairness and objectivity,' according to its back cover."
  • I've fixed the awkward sentence (you're right: "borrowed" is better; it was actually a word that was missing, which I didn't notice – should have been "lent on," not lent). That now reads: "The authors also report allegations that Eddy's major work, Science and Health (1875), which became Christian Science's main religious text, borrowed heavily from the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a New England faith healer. Quimby had treated Eddy in the years before his death and had given her some of his unpublished notes."
  • Sorry, I don't add ISBNs either, per CITE. I don't mean to be awkward, but I can't see the point of them (with rare exceptions), so it's something I never do. There have been discussions on WT:CITE about how they're regularly wrong anyway, and may not relate to the editions used as sources. :SlimVirgin (talk) 02:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like them because I can click on them, if the book is in the book cite template, and bring up Worldcat to find a copy for myself. But, you're right, they're not required so long as you're consistent one way or another. I suspect that inaccurate ISBNs are probably caused by people failing to find the ISBN of their particular edition on Google or some other electronic media, so that's really a lick on the editors, not the utility of ISBNs themselves. At any rate I think we're pretty much done here.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:28, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for the review. Sturm. Your suggestions have definitely improved the article. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:29, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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