PREVIEW: Ventfort Hall, Tuesday Summer Tea & Talk Series, Author Bill Greer

Ventfort Hall, Lenox, MA

www.gildedage.org

June 14, 2022

Brooklyn storyteller and author Bill Greer will kick off Ventfort Hall’s 2022 Tuesday Summer Tea & Talk series on June 14 at 4:00 pm. He will talk about the setting of his book A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York. Tea will be served after his presentation.

 

The year is 1872, seven years after the Civil War. New York is convulsing with social upheaval and sexual revolution. In this illustrated talk, Bill Greer paints a picture of the city from the man’s world of Wall Street to the mansions of Fifth Avenue, from the smut dealers of Nassau Street to the lime lights of Broadway, from pious Christians to free-loving iconoclasts. He highlights larger-than-life characters who fascinated the city – suffragist and presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, vice hunter Anthony Comstock, celebrity preacher Henry Ward Beecher, and more – and the issues of the day that play out through their lives, issues that resonate today, from sexual impropriety and reproductive rights to attacks on the press and the chasm between rich and poor.

 

Bill Greer has spent decades exploring New York, along with the world. As a travel writer and Internet entrepreneur, he built the early web’s leading community for outdoor adventure. More recently, he has focused on New York’s Gilded Age.

 

Tickets are $30 for members and with advance reservation; $35 day of the event.

Reservations are required as seats are limited. 

For reservations call (413) 637-3206.