ABSTRACT
"These are strange times," charged Kate Field in 1886, "when a female Mormon lobby asks Congress to give to Utah the liberty of self-degradation!" The degradation Field spoke of was polygamy, a practice she condemned as "monstrous," a "rock that need[ed] blowing up with the dynamite of law." Popular lecturer, political activist, and arbiter of intellectual taste and fashion, Field was also a passionate opponent of polygamy and of the Mormon hierarchy that practiced it in Utah Territory. Her "Mormon Monster" lectures drew sellout audiences in the mid-1880s. Her talk was crafted to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of listeners, guiding their thinking while entertaining them with her unrelenting and unembarrassed discussion of a slightly naughty topic. 1
