From the perspective of Protestant America, nineteenth-century Mormons were the victims of a peculiar zealotry, a population deranged - socially, sexually, even racially - by the extravagances of belief they called 'religion'. This book offers a counter-history of early Mormon theology and practice, tracking the Saints from their emergence as a dissident sect to their renunciation of polygamy at century's end. Over these turbulent decades, Mormons would appear by turns as heretics, sex-radicals, refugees, anti-imperialists, colonisers, and, eventually, reluctant monogamists and enfranchised citizens.

Previously issued in print: 2019.