Seduced By The Light: The Mina Miller Edison Story

Seduced by the Light, is the first and only biography of Mina Miller Edison, the wife of Thomas Edison, the woman who created and shaped the myth of one of the most seminal figures in America’s history. The Thomas Edison we think we know was essentially created by Mina Miller Edison.

Author of the book, Alexandra Rimer, a Rutgers faculty member and Assistant Editor at the Thomas Edison Papers, will discuss the stories she read from her unprecedented access to Edison family diaries, memoirs, and letters to look below the surface of the Edison family during the Gilded Age from the little-known perspective of this female protagonist.  She will also talk about her role as an editor in this important research project.

Thomas Edison is known as one of the world’s greatest and most financially successful inventors. What is not known about Edison, however, is that he was a dreadful father and an appalling husband.  Following his first wife’s death, Edison searched for the next mother to his children and chose a wealthy twenty-year-old socialite from Ohio who was nineteen years his junior. Unfortunately, what Mina did not know at the time was that Edison was a terrible father, completely neglecting his children and, ultimately, Mina herself.

The author will share excerpts from the story of Mina, which is a story of a woman born into privilege in the Gilded Age who was forced to sacrifice love and happiness on the altar of progress for the public image of Thomas Edison. She will give us glimpses into the stories of conflicts within the Edison family including battles between Edison and his 6 children, all of which are revealed in the book and that have been consciously hidden from the press and public solely to enhance the Edison name for nearly a century.

Alexandra Rimer has been an Assistant Editor at the Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, a research center at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, and  an editing project  since 2005. She is a co-recipient of the Eugene S. Ferguson Prize (Papers of Thomas A. Edison), Society for the History of Technology, 2005. She is also a frequent lecturer on Mina Miller Edison at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange, New Jersey, where she lives.

This talk is open to all and no registration is required.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.