First lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who died in 1882, is currently starring on Broadway in a Tony-award-winning comedy that the Journal’s theater critic calls “howlingly funny.” The theatrical Mary may be good for laughs, but other than the hoop skirt and pipe curls, she bears no resemblance to the real Mary, whose life was crowded with tragedy, misfortune and misinterpretation. History has been unkind to the former first lady, who has been routinely belittled, mocked and misjudged.
Lois Romano, a journalist who has reported on several first ladies, sets the record straight in “An Inconvenient Widow,” an exhaustive and sympathetic biography of a woman whose legacy deserves re-examination.