Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, is, along with the Bible, one of the two central texts of the Christian Science religion. Eddy described it as her "most important work". She began writing it in February 1872, and the first edition was published in 1875. However, she would continue working on it and making changes for the rest of her life. Many sources overlook the importance of this book in its finalized form in 1910. It is well known as the foundational guidance for the Church of Christ, Scientist, but the book also managed to stir up questions about issues that so many male religious leaders and thinkers believed they had settled. In writing about the first edition of Science and Health, feminist scholar and biographer Gillian Gill homes in on this point: "The real issue is the author's audacity, her daring to think that a woman like her, with her resources, could write, not the expected textbook on mental healing techniques, not the comfortable compendium of healing anecdotes, but a book that takes on the great questions of God and man, good and evil, and that rejects orthodox verities." The book was selected as one of the "75 Books By Women Whose Words Have Changed The World", by the Women's National Book Association. As of 2001, the book had sold over nine million copies.