June 21, 2002

Dolley Madison Biography Stirs a Bidding War; Cutbacks by Presses Raise Fears About Tenure

By JENNIFER K. RUARK

HELLO, DOLLEY! Dolley Madison was portly, she was over-the-top, so why shouldn't a book about her -- and the advance for it -- be the same? Catherine Allgor, an assistant professor of history at the University of California at Riverside, has scored an advance in the mid-six figures from Henry Holt and Company for a political biography of the woman Daniel Webster called "the only permanent power in Washington." And she says she won't have to dumb it down: The publishing proposal she