Trials of a Scold: The Incredible True Story of Writer Anne Royall by Jeff Biggers

A scold is a woman who nags or grumbles constantly, and Anne Royall (1769-1854) really was tried and convicted in 1829 of being a “common scold”! Why? Because she was arguably America’s first professional female journalist and she dared to raise a stink about the need for separation of church and state. Called a “literary wildcat from the backwoods,” by a competing male editor, Royall was born Anne Newport in Baltimore but grew up on the western frontier of Pennsylvania and western Virginia. She and her widowed mother were employed as servants when she was 16 in the home of William Royall in Sweet Springs, Virginia, now Monroe County, West Virginia. Twelve years later, after educating herself in Royall’s extensive library, Anne married him, much to the chagrin of his family. After his death fifteen years later, she traveled to Alabama and began her career as a travel writer. In 1831, she established a newspaper in Washington, D.C. that exposed political corruption and fraud. She contin