Bibliography of Mormon Polygamy

For early and Nauvoo polygamy, see Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984); George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: "... but we called it celestial marriage" (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008); and Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: the Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997).

For Utah polygamy, see Kimball Young, Isn’t One Wife Enough? The Story of Mormon Polygamy (New York: Henry Holt, 1954); Jesse Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987); Kathryn Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2001); and works by Wagoner, Foster, Hardy and Compton listed above.

For the pre- and post-Manifesto eras, see B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1992); Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, A Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991); Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-–1930 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986); D. Michael Quinn, “L.D.S. Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18 (Spring 1995): 9-104; Samuel Woolley Taylor, Family Kingdom (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951); Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

For twentieth-century polygamy, see Martha Sontag-Bradley, Kidnapped from That Land: History of the Short Creek Raid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993); Irwin Altman and Joseph Ginat, Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Recent releases on Polygamy, See Jon Krakauer Banking on Heaven (A Dot Reidelbach & Laurie Allen Film); Benjamin G. Bistline, Colorado City Polygamists: An Inside Look for the Outsider (Agreka Books); Dorothy Allred Solomon, Daughter of the Saints: Growing Up In Polygamy (W. W. Norton & Company ); Carolyn Jessop and Laura Palmer, Escape, (Broadway); Anrea Moore-Emmett, God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contermorary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped (Prince-Nez Press) Susan Ray Schmidt, His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy (Kassidy Lane Publishing LLC); Brian C. Hales, Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto (Greg Kofford Books); Benjamin G. Bistline The Polygamists: A History of Colorado City, Arizona (Agreka); Melvin C Johnson, Polygamy on the Pedernales: Lyman Wight's Mormon Villages in Antebellum Texas 1845-1858 (Utah State University Press); Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918 (University of Illinois Press); Irene Spencer, Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife (Center Street); Mary Mackert, The Sixth of Seven Wives: Escape from Modern Day Polygamy (xpolygamist).

Click here for Todd's essay on Mormon Polygamy