Fawn M. Brodie

Family Background

1915. September 15: Born Fawn McKay in Ogden, Utah, she was the niece of Church President David O. McKay and the granddaughter of BYU President George H. Brimhall. Married Bernard Brodie; they had three children.

Education

1934. Graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. in English at the age of eighteen. "I was devout until I went to the University of Utah …. Being exposed to the great literature of the past… was a very quiet kind of liberation. … There was no active trauma. It was a quiet kind of moving out into… the larger society and learning that the center of the universe was not Salt Lake City as I had been taught as a child.

"It was not really until I went away to graduate school at the University of Chicago that I understood how much of a liberation the university experience in Salt Lake City had been, because then the confining aspects of the Mormon religion dropped off within a few weeks. As I've said before, 'it was like taking off a hot coat in the summertime.'"

1936. Received an M.A. in English literature from the University of Chicago the same day she and Bernard Brodie were married. He was to become a noted international political strategist and professor of political science at UCLA.

They had met in the student cafeteria: "Because I was tall and could easily be seen, and because I needed work to help pay school expenses, I was given a special job at the University of Chicago cafeteria. I carried a big coffee pot and poured second cups of coffee. When I poured an extra cup for Bernie, he gave me two red carnations. He brought me flowers every day for the next six weeks, when we were married."

No Man Knows My History

1936. While employed at the University of Chicago library, she began research on the life of Joseph Smith. She submitted the first five chapters to Alfred Knopf Publishing Company and in 1943 was awarded a $2500 Fellowship in Biography.

1945. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet was published. She tried to prepare her parents by writing:"It is only fair to you both that I tell you quite frankly and honestly in advance that the book is likely to get a good bit of hostile criticism from the authorities of the Church. Certain things which I feel should be included to tell the whole story of the man, you will feel should better have been left buried. You will probably be criticized for having raised a wayward daughter."

The best-known criticism was Hugh Nibley's No Ma'am, That's Not History, which argued that another biographer could use the same facts to support a different set of conclusions. To her parents, Brodie wrote in 1946: "Thank you for sending the Hugh Nibley pamphlet. I had expected better things in this 'scholarly reply to Mrs. Brodie.' It is a flippant and shallow piece. He really did me a service by demonstrating the difference between his scholarship and mine. If that is the best a young Mormon historian can offer, then I am all the more certain that the death of B.H. Roberts meant the end of all that was truly scholarly and honest in orthodox Mormon historiography."

Heretic

1946. "I was excommunicated for heresy—and I was a heretic—and specifically for writing the book. My husband was teaching at Yale at the time and we were living in New Haven. Two Mormon missionaries came to the door and presented me with a letter asking me to appear before the bishop's court in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to defend myself against heresy. I simply told them, or wrote a letter telling them, that I would not go because, after all, I was a heretic."

The letter announcing the bishop's court charged "apostasy, in this among other matters: That in a book recently published by you, you assert matters as truths which deny the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the priesthood and of Christ's Church through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith, contrary to the beliefs, doctrines and teachings of the Church."

Psychohistorical Biographer

1951. The Brodies moved to California, where Fawn actively pursued her literary career. During the next thirty years she wrote Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959)—the life of a radical Republican leader of Civil War Reconstruction; From Crossbow to H-Bomb (co-authored with her husband, 1962); The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (1967)—Nile explorer, translator of the Arabian Nights, soldier, and poet; second edition of No Man Knows My History (1969); and Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974). She also edited The City of the Saints (1963)—an account of Sir Richard Burton's 1860 trip to Utah, and Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake (1963)—Frederick Piercy's 1853 narrative of a visit to Utah, as well as publishing more than forty book reviews and articles.

Her publications, particularly the Joseph Smith and Thomas Jefferson books, generated both acclaim and criticism. Criticisms centered on the use of psycho-biographical techniques to ascertain a historical figure's experiences and motivations through psychological interpretation. Mindful of the pitfalls of her profession, Brodie commented, "Even the most dispassionate historian, trying to select fairly with intelligence and discretion, manipulates in spite of himself, by nuances, by repudiation, by omission, by unconscious affection or hostility."

Social Critic

"She attacked civic problems, she attacked political problems, she was a wonderful letter writer to the Times," a neighbor eulogized. "We always felt joy when we felt a letter coming on, seeing it snap in her dark eyes before she would attack the typewriter. … You'd see Fawn stalking the moors like Boadicea out on a Roman charge. She was really a warrior lady about our hill; she was a fierce defender of it. And when she saw something evil creeping up on us, in the way of either civic injustice or some pollution that was in the offing, she fought. She was a wonderful fighter."

Honors

She was awarded several prestigious awards during her lifetime, including the Commonwealth Club of California Literature Award in 1959, the Utah Historical Society 1967 Fellow of the Year, the 1974 Alumni Emeritus Award at the University of Utah, and the 1975 Los Angeles Times "Woman of the Year." She was appointed senior lecturer in the UCLA history department, though her academic credentials were in English literature.

Retirement and Death

1977. Retired from UCLA to write Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character. One year later, her husband died of cancer.

1981. January 10: Died of cancer at the age of sixty-five in Santa Monica, California, having refused pain medication to finish the final draft of her Nixon biography. She was cremated, her ashes scattered over the Pacific Palisades area she loved and protected.

Sources
American Literature 46 (January 1975):581.
Brodie, Fawn M. "Can We Manipulate the Past?" Paper read at First Annual American West Lecture. Salt Lake City, 1970.
Los Angeles Times, 20 February 1977, 12 January 1981.
Provo, Utah. Brigham Young University. Harold B. Lee Library. Barbara Mckay Smith Letter Collection.
_____. Fawn Brodie Memorial Services.
Salt Lake City, Utah. University of Utah. J. Willard Marriott Library. Fawn M. Brodie Interview at California State University at Fullerton, 30 November 1975.
_____. Fawn M. Brodie Letter Collection.

	A Book of Mormons Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker Copyright 1982, Signature Books Salt Lake City, Utah Contents


	Fawn M. Brodie (1915-1981)

		Fawn M. Brodie was the author of No Man Knows My History and a psychohistorical biographer. Photograph courtesy Utah State Historical Society.


	Family Background 1915. September 15: Born Fawn McKay in Ogden, Utah, she was the niece of Church President David O. McKay and the granddaughter of BYU President George H. Brimhall. Married Bernard Brodie; they had three children. Education 1934. Graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. in English at the age of eighteen. "I was devout until I went to the University of Utah …. Being exposed to the great literature of the past… was a very quiet kind of liberation. … There was no active trauma. It was a quiet kind of moving out into… the larger society and learning that the center of the universe was not Salt Lake City as I had been taught as a child. "It was not really until I went away to graduate school at the University of Chicago that I understood how much of a liberation the university experience in Salt Lake City had been, because then the confining aspects of the Mormon religion dropped off within a few weeks. As I've said before, 'it was like taking off a hot coat in the summertime.'" 1936. Received an M.A. in English literature from the University of Chicago the same day she and Bernard Brodie were married. He was to become a noted international political strategist and professor of political science at UCLA. They had met in the student cafeteria: "Because I was tall and could easily be seen, and because I needed work to help pay school expenses, I was given a special job at the University of Chicago cafeteria. I carried a big coffee pot and poured second cups of coffee. When I poured an extra cup for Bernie, he gave me two red carnations. He brought me flowers every day for the next six weeks, when we were married." *No Man Knows My History* 1936. While employed at the University of Chicago library, she began research on the life of Joseph Smith. She submitted the first five chapters to Alfred Knopf Publishing Company and in 1943 was awarded a $2500 Fellowship in Biography. 1945. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet was published. She tried to prepare her parents by writing:"It is only fair to you both that I tell you quite frankly and honestly in advance that the book is likely to get a good bit of hostile criticism from the authorities of the Church. Certain things which I feel should be included to tell the whole story of the man, you will feel should better have been left buried. You will probably be criticized for having raised a wayward daughter." The best-known criticism was Hugh Nibley's No Ma'am, That's Not History, which argued that another biographer could use the same facts to support a different set of conclusions. To her parents, Brodie wrote in 1946: "Thank you for sending the Hugh Nibley pamphlet. I had expected better things in this 'scholarly reply to Mrs. Brodie.' It is a flippant and shallow piece. He really did me a service by demonstrating the difference between his scholarship and mine. If that is the best a young Mormon historian can offer, then I am all the more certain that the death of B.H. Roberts meant the end of all that was truly scholarly and honest in orthodox Mormon historiography." Heretic 1946. "I was excommunicated for heresy—and I was a heretic—and specifically for writing the book. My husband was teaching at Yale at the time and we were living in New Haven. Two Mormon missionaries came to the door and presented me with a letter asking me to appear before the bishop's court in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to defend myself against heresy. I simply told them, or wrote a letter telling them, that I would not go because, after all, I was a heretic." The letter announcing the bishop's court charged "apostasy, in this among other matters: That in a book recently published by you, you assert matters as truths which deny the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the priesthood and of Christ's Church through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith, contrary to the beliefs, doctrines and teachings of the Church." Psychohistorical Biographer 1951. The Brodies moved to California, where Fawn actively pursued her literary career. During the next thirty years she wrote Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959)—the life of a radical Republican leader of Civil War Reconstruction; From Crossbow to H-Bomb (co-authored with her husband, 1962); The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (1967)—Nile explorer, translator of the Arabian Nights, soldier, and poet; second edition of No Man Knows My History (1969); and Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974). She also edited The City of the Saints (1963)—an account of Sir Richard Burton's 1860 trip to Utah, and Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake (1963)—Frederick Piercy's 1853 narrative of a visit to Utah, as well as publishing more than forty book reviews and articles. Her publications, particularly the Joseph Smith and Thomas Jefferson books, generated both acclaim and criticism. Criticisms centered on the use of psycho-biographical techniques to ascertain a historical figure's experiences and motivations through psychological interpretation. Mindful of the pitfalls of her profession, Brodie commented, "Even the most dispassionate historian, trying to select fairly with intelligence and discretion, manipulates in spite of himself, by nuances, by repudiation, by omission, by unconscious affection or hostility." Social Critic "She attacked civic problems, she attacked political problems, she was a wonderful letter writer to the Times," a neighbor eulogized. "We always felt joy when we felt a letter coming on, seeing it snap in her dark eyes before she would attack the typewriter. … You'd see Fawn stalking the moors like Boadicea out on a Roman charge. She was really a warrior lady about our hill; she was a fierce defender of it. And when she saw something evil creeping up on us, in the way of either civic injustice or some pollution that was in the offing, she fought. She was a wonderful fighter." Honors She was awarded several prestigious awards during her lifetime, including the Commonwealth Club of California Literature Award in 1959, the Utah Historical Society 1967 Fellow of the Year, the 1974 Alumni Emeritus Award at the University of Utah, and the 1975 Los Angeles Times "Woman of the Year." She was appointed senior lecturer in the UCLA history department, though her academic credentials were in English literature. Retirement and Death 1977. Retired from UCLA to write Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character. One year later, her husband died of cancer. 1981. January 10: Died of cancer at the age of sixty-five in Santa Monica, California, having refused pain medication to finish the final draft of her Nixon biography. She was cremated, her ashes scattered over the Pacific Palisades area she loved and protected. Sources American Literature 46 (January 1975):581. Brodie, Fawn M. "Can We Manipulate the Past?" Paper read at First Annual American West Lecture. Salt Lake City, 1970. Los Angeles Times, 20 February 1977, 12 January 1981. Provo, Utah. Brigham Young University. Harold B. Lee Library. Barbara Mckay Smith Letter Collection. _____. Fawn Brodie Memorial Services. Salt Lake City, Utah. University of Utah. J. Willard Marriott Library. Fawn M. Brodie Interview at California State University at Fullerton, 30 November 1975. _____. Fawn M. Brodie Letter Collection.