Women Who Dared: To Break All the Rules

Scott (Fast and Louche) serves up six tasty biographies of bold British, French, and American women united by rebelliousness. There’s no introduction or conclusion, and no statement on how he chose these subjects; Scott just dives right into the first bio—that of the mesmerizing American Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president in 1870. British writer Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman took unpopular stances in favor of women’s rights; Scott’s biography of her ends abruptly, because Wollstonecraft’s life ended the same way, after giving birth to the author of Frankenstein. American Aimee Semple McPherson, a millionaire evangelist in the 1920s and ’30s, was a “spiller of bunk and baiter of boobery,” according to one journalist. Though Englishwoman Edwina Mountbatten repeatedly cuckolded her husband, Dickie, including with Indian political leader Jawaharlal Nehru when her husband was viceroy of India in the 1940s, she also did much for India’s poor. Wealthy American socialite Margaret Whigham Argyll was divorced by her British duke husband in 1963 after naughty Polaroids of her extramarital activities (one labeled “Oh!”) came to light. Coco Chanel designed clothes 20th-century women could actually wear and created “the scent of a woman” with her signature No. 5 fragrance. Scott presents each woman’s tale in humorous, gossipy style. Each subject possessed “a priceless gift—personal charisma,” he writes, but also, some of them were probably “insufferable prigs.” This fun, often scandalous romp is women’s history with a very light touch. Agent: Julian Friedman, Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. (Mar.)