FB

Biographer, No Man Knows My History

Fawn M. Brodie

1915–1981

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The First Vision

Biographer, No Man Knows My History

Brodie's 1945 biography argued that the vision passed unnoticed in Palmyra and may have been 'an evolutionary fantasy beginning in a half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement,' or else invention. Her hypothesis set the terms of the twentieth-century argument; both defenders and critics have been answering it ever since.

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1 events across 1 topics, chronological. Only events this person was actually part of — present at, responsible for, or the subject of — not every event where the name comes up.

1945

Brodie proposes the vision was a later elaboration

No Man Knows My History argued that nothing happened in Palmyra in 1820 that anyone noticed, that Smith's own family confused the vision with the visit of the angel, and that the story may have been 'the elaboration of some half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement' or 'sheer invention.' Brodie was excommunicated the following year.

Disputed Brodie wrote before the 1832 and 1835 accounts were public; she held to the thesis in her 1971 revision, arguing the new documents confirmed it.
People: Fawn M. Brodie

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