| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

David Chapin. Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2004. Pp. vii, 257. Cloth $80.00, paper $24.95.

When the Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane died in 1857, his body was carried around the United States by steamer and rail, often with a military escort, for nearly a month. It lay in state in New Orleans, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Columbus and was finally buried in Philadelphia, attracting thousands of mourners at each stop. Kane's extraordinary fame was nearly matched by that of Margaret Fox, a celebrated "spirit rapper" who, along with her sisters, drew crowds of curious spectators (even prominent ones like Horace Greeley, Amy Post, and James Fenimore Cooper) willing to pay to participate in, and investigate the legitimacy of, their séances. From 1852 until his death, Maggie Fox was Kane's intimate friend, correspondent, and perhaps fiancé, a curious fact of history out of which David Chapin weaves this interesting and cogently written narrative. It looks at both the private and public lives of Kane and Fox, who were in some senses remarkably mismatched: her working-class background, lack of education, and deceitful public life made her an unlikely candidate to marry a respectable surgeon, explorer, and author—as his family told him when they began to suspect that his paternalistic interest in Fox might be romantic. Kane himself recognized as much when, departing on his second Arctic expedition, he condescendingly urged Fox to give up spirit rapping (and the financial independence and freedom it gave her) and learn to be a genteel, domestic woman who might someday be worthy of him.

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