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Former first ladies Julia Grant and Michelle Obama. (Photos by Matthew Brady / Brady-Handy Photograph Collection / Library of Congress, Matt McClain / The Washington Post) (Matthew Brady, Matt McClain / Brady-Brady-Handy Photograph Collection / Library of Congress, Matt McClain / The Washington Post)
When the former First Lady, Julia Grant, completed her memoirs in 1899, with the help of Mark Twain, she could not find a publisher.
"My book, on which I've built so many castles, is said by critics too close, too close to the private life of [her husband]and I thought it was exactly what we wanted. You can well imagine my great disappointment and sorrow, "the widow of Ulysses S. Grant wrote in a letter to a friend.
Times, to say the least, have changed.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama begins Tuesday her new memoir titled "Becoming" with a sold-out book tour featuring Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé. She and her husband, Barack Obama, have ordered a joint book contract worth more than $ 65 million.
But according to presidential historian Craig Fehrman, every first-lady memory has been a bestseller – many have even surpassed their husbands' books.
[For eight years, Michelle Obama watched every word. In her memoir, she’s done with that.]
After the failure of Grant's effort (eventually published in 1975), Helen Taft became the first woman to publish a memoir entitled "Recollections of Full Years" in 1914. The New York Sun describes it as " brilliant, witty and deliciously entertaining reminiscences, "in a three-sentence review.
[Why Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton attended Barbara Bush’s funeral]
Two decades later, Edith Wilson's memoirs were examined longer, but they mocked the attention paid to the social calendar and clothing of the former First Lady. For the historian curious about the rumors that she would have secretly become the "first woman president" after Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke, one would find only "meager choices," wrote a critical.
Eleanor Roosevelt, a feminist icon, has written not one but four memoirs, ranging from the beginning of the presidency of her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt to the year before his death in 1962. Unlike Grant and Wilson, Roosevelt's autobiographies almost entirely dealt with world affairs and his personal relations. life barely at all.
Almost every evening of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, the first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, dictated a record of the day on a tape recorder. In 1969, she had amassed a transcription of nearly two million words, which she then filed in a memoir.
"It's like cutting one of your darlings," she told the Washington Post in 1970. The latest 300,000-word review was well received and outpaced sales of her husband's "flatbed" dissertation several years later.
With the exception of Pat Nixon, every first lady issued a memoir. Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter both sold at a higher price than their husbands, according to Fehrman.
Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the right, enthusiastically tries to hear a journalist's question while posing with other former ladies in 1994. Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan. (Denis Paquin / AP)
But none of these books, whether devoted to world affairs or domestic life, prepared readers for the publication of the memoir of Nancy Reagan's first lady, "My Turn" (1989) – nicknamed "My Burn "for his harsh treatment of Ronald Reagan's staff – and quite simply. about who Nancy Reagan came into contact with.
Sally Quinn from the Washington Post In a scathing critique, he said, "I read his book on a weekend and on Sunday night my shoulders and neck were practically spasmodic. This is a very angry person. "
She continued, "She is furious with [former chief of staff and Treasury secretary] Don Regan. She is also angry at [former Secretary of State] Al Haig, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Ford, John Sears, Mike Deaver, Ed Meese, David Stockman, Bill Safire, Raisa Gorbachev, Stu Spencer, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, Joan Didion, Me (I was looking for astrologer Joan Quigley in the index, I swear!), my husband [Post executive editor Ben Bradlee], her husband, her stepfather, Fritz Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, John Poindexter, Ollie North, George Bush, doctors on television, the press, his stepchildren Maureen and Michael and daughter Patti. I'm sure I've left some people out, but you understand.
The bad vibrations did not stop and may have propelled sales. "My Turn" spent more than three months on the New York Times bestseller list.
Obama is now about to occupy the same spot on this list alongside the other first ladies, though Reagan has blatantly deferred – she skipped the book tour.
Learn more Retropolis:
"How could you?" The day Jackie Kennedy became Jackie Onassis
"You were the reason:" The love story of Barbara and George Bush was greeted at his funeral.
"I am not a woman I am a member of Congress": the first women to enter the House
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