Once the newlyweds arrived at Edison’s summer home in Fort Myers, Florida, Mina spent less than an hour a day with Edison - entertaining herself for the rest of the time with her new stepdaughter and another couple. That started immediately on Mina and Edison’s honeymoon, which included stops when Edison met with young inventors and journalists. He didn’t care about his looks or being charming anymore.” "He thought, ‘She seems right, she’s pretty enough and she checks all the boxes.’ But as soon as he got her, he went back to work and his old habits. “He looked at their courtship as another invention,” Rimer said. Revolutionary War restaurants: Follow Washington’s footsteps at these NJ spotsīut as soon as Mina left her loving Methodist family in Ohio to move to New Jersey into Edison’s mansion, she quickly found herself left alone. He was looking for a new wife after his previous spouse died and left him with three children. When Mina, a 20-year-old socialite, met Edison, it was an unusual time for he was not working. Letters, some which lacked dates, were spread throughout archives in New York, New Jersey and Ohio. This was complicated in itself - over 6,000 letters exist just from Mina, who was from Ohio and had 10 siblings in a close-knit family. To write the 368-page “Seduced by the Light,” Rimer spent a decade researching Mina and her family. “But the social anthropological history just jumped out to me - it’s like ‘Succession’ meets ‘Downton Abbey.’ Every story and dynamic just pulled me in.
“I’ve been here for 20 years and I work mostly with men, and they’re mostly interested in the history of technology and engineering,” Rimer said. But in doing so, she became interested in Mina’s untold story. He would give all of his time and energy to journalists and people interested in his patents, but he wouldn’t give time to his own family.”įor her job, Rimer annotates Thomas Edison-related documents like patents, diaries and letters. “He wasn’t a warm character and he left everything to Mina. “Edison was this lone figure who constantly invented - think Steve Jobs - who was unilaterally focused and was over-involved with patents, work, legal battles, bankers and traveling,” Rimer said.
#EDISON MAIL FREE#
There will also be free tours of Glenmont, Edison's historical home. The event will include an interview, reading and signings. on Sunday, June 4, at the Edison Laboratory at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange.
Rimer will host a book launch and signing of “Seduced by the Light: The Mina Miller Edison Story” (Lyons Press, $30) at 2 p.m.
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“I knew when I started reading her letters that she had a larger role in his story, but no one knew about it." She kept that Edison reputation to what the public knows,” added Rimer, an assistant editor at the Thomas Edison Papers at Rutgers University. “She knew she had to put herself first, and she was also like the first PR person. “Mina isn’t a #MeToo character, but she’s a ‘Me First’ character,” said Alexandra Rimer, whose book about Mina comes out on Monday, May 1. History books know Thomas Edison as the American father of research and development, inventing everything from the light bulb to the film camera.īut to his wife Mina Miller Edison, who was 19 years his junior, and mother and stepmother of his six children, he wasn’t much of a father at all. ~Courtesy of Literary Titan and Alexandra Rimer, M圜
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