Two new books illuminate the life of Victoria Woodhull, outcast from the women's suffrage movement.(Originated from Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Victoria Woodhull was, among other things, a fortune teller, spiritualist, writer, publisher of her own weekly newspaper, mother, ``free lover,'' lecturer, blackmailer and, allegedly, a prostitute.

She was also the first female stockbroker and the first woman to address Congress. An outsider and outcast from the women's suffrage organization, she is best remembered, if at all, as the first woman to run for president (in 1872). Yet, there is little more than a sentence or two on her in most histories of the period; in fact, Woodhull is barely mentioned in Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's six-volume history of the suffrage movement.

How could a woman who helped create a time be accorded so little space in its …