Henry Ward Beecher was once, according to a new book by Debby Applegate, "The Most Famous Man in America." Despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, among others, lived during his time.

"I really believe the title is true," Applegate said by phone from her home in New Haven, Conn. "Henry Ward Beecher was really well known by everyone.

"Some knew him only by stereotype. He was, perhaps, a combination of Billy Graham, Al Sharpton and Paris Hilton. Beecher became the common property of every American, and it lasted for almost 40 years."

At least, Beecher may have been the most colorful orator of the 19th century. Beginning in 1850, he delivered spectacular sermons at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights and then became an equally popular lecturer all over the country. He was noted for his memorable voice, his open and sometimes wild gestures, and his dead-on impersonations of celebrities at the time.

The biography is unusually entertaining.

Though Applegate lives in Connecticut, she is a native of Oregon. Since her father was a Mormon and her mother was a Catholic, she sees herself as "an outsider" who went to church with both her Mormon cousins and her Catholic cousins.

She became fascinated with Beecher soon after moving East to go to school in Massachusetts at Amherst College — coincidentally Beecher's alma mater. She realized she had never before met a Congregationalist or an Episcopalian. Astounded with Beecher's charisma, Applegate wrote her senior thesis, as well as her doctoral dissertation, at Yale University on this irreverent, funny, literary man.

"The dissertation was really scholarly," said Applegate. "When I signed a contract for the book with Doubleday, I thought I knew a lot about Beecher. But the academic things I wrote were hifalutin. So I decided to look at some of the personal letters I hadn't seen yet, and those Victorians really wrote letters. The sheer amount of material I quickly discovered was overwhelming."

Then Applegate had to turn her dissertation into a book for the general reader instead of the scholar. "It took me a little while to learn the craft to get people to turn the page." It took her seven more years to get the book ready to publish.