Margaret Anderson. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-112044).
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Anderson, Margaret (1886-1973)
In
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Anderson, Margaret (1886-1973), editor and author
Holly A. Baggett
Anderson, Margaret (24 November 1886–19 October 1973), editor and author, was born Margaret Carolyn Anderson in Indianapolis, Indiana, the daughter of Arthur Aubrey Anderson and Jessie Shortridge. Anderson’s father was a railway executive who provided a comfortable middle-class existence for his wife and three daughters. Anderson, whose chief interest as a young woman was music and literature, was soon regarded as the rebel of the family. After three years at Western College for Women in Ohio, she dropped out and made her way to Chicago, hoping to find work as a writer. After various stints as a bookstore clerk, print assistant, and part-time critic, Anderson decided to start her own literary journal. With little money but a great deal of enthusiasm and support from friends, Anderson founded the avant-garde ...
Article
Cowley, Malcolm (1898-1989), literary critic and editor
Robert L. Gale
Cowley, Malcolm (24 August 1898–28 March 1989), literary critic and editor, was born in a farmhouse near Belsano, Pennsylvania, the son of William Cowley, a homeopathic physician, and Josephine Hutmacher. After attending Pittsburgh public schools, in which he began a lifelong friendship with the critic ...
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Cowley, Malcolm (1898-1989)
Maker: Carl Van Vechten
In
Malcolm Cowley Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1963. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-106863).
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Dennie, Joseph (1768-1812), essayist, critic, and editor
Jeffrey H. Richards
Dennie, Joseph (30 August 1768–07 January 1812), essayist, critic, and editor, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph Dennie, a merchant, and Mary Green. To avoid the hostilities that threatened Boston, the family moved in 1775 to Lexington, Massachusetts, where they remained. In 1783 Dennie was sent back to Boston to prepare for a commercial career. After working for James Swan, Dennie went to live and study with the Reverend Samuel West of Needham, who prepared him for college. Dennie entered Harvard in 1787 as a sophomore; although suspended for the spring term in 1790 for insubordination to the tutors, he managed to graduate on time by continuing his studies with another minister in Groton. Soured by his collegiate experience, Dennie frequently denounced Harvard in both public and private writings....
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Didier, Eugene Lemoine (22 December 1838–08 September 1913), author and editor
Robert L. Gale
Didier, Eugene Lemoine (22 December 1838–08 September 1913), author and editor, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Franklin James Didier, a physician, and Julia LeMoine. He studied English literature and composition for four years at St. Vincent’s Academy in Baltimore and attended classes at Loyola College, also in Baltimore, for four more years but left without a degree. For three years he worked as an accountant in a commission firm, during which time he continued studying literature. He founded and edited ...
Article
Duyckinck, Evert Augustus (1816-1878), editor, author, and bibliophile
Robert L. Gale
Duyckinck, Evert Augustus (23 November 1816–13 August 1878), editor, author, and bibliophile, was born in New York City, the son of Evert Duyckinck, a wealthy publisher and book collector, and Harriet June. He graduated from Columbia College in 1835. He either wrote or cowrote the only issue of ...
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Godwin, Parke (1816-1904), journalist and editor
Donald A. Ringe
Godwin, Parke (25 February 1816–07 January 1904), journalist and editor, was born in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of Abraham Godwin, a manufacturer and merchant, and Martha Parke. After graduating from Princeton in 1834, he returned to Paterson to study law. He lived briefly in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was admitted to the bar, but before establishing a practice, he moved to New York City. There he met ...
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Harris, Frank (1856-1931), journalist and writer
Bridget Bennett
Harris, Frank (14 February 1856–26 August 1931), journalist and writer, was born James Thomas Harris in Galway, Ireland, the son of Thomas Vernon Harris, a customs shipmaster, and Anne Thomas. He was raised in a nonconformist family of Pembrokeshire stock, and in his early years the family moved about within Ireland. He was educated in Britain and at age fifteen, having finished school, he used a cash prize to buy a steerage ticket to the United States. He moved from New York to Illinois and Texas doing odd jobs, including, he always claimed, a stint as a cowboy, finally settling for a time in Kansas. This, and much else of his life, would be elaborated on in his sensational and infamous autobiography, and would become the basis for some of his fiction. The facts of his life often conflicted with his elaborate fantasies. He began studying for a degree at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and though various accounts of his career in Lawrence exist, it is certain that he was admitted to the bar there in 1875....
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Holbrook, James (1812-1864), postal official and journalist
Richard R. John
Holbrook, James (1812–28 April 1864), postal official and journalist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of unknown parents. Holbrook grew up in Boston, where he was apprenticed to a printer. In 1833, he moved to Connecticut, where he worked as a newspaper editor and in that year married Mary Baker Tyler. He and Tyler had four children. He edited the ...
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Josephson, Matthew (1899-1978), writer
David E. Shi
Josephson, Matthew (15 February 1899–13 March 1978), writer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Julius Josephson, a banker, and Sarah Kasindorf. A child of Jewish immigrants from Romania and Russia, Josephson graduated from Columbia University in 1920. That same year he married Hannah Geffen, a nineteen-year-old reporter for the ...
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Josephson, Matthew (1899-1978)
In
Matthew Josephson Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-116726).
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Kirkland, Caroline Matilda (1801-1864), writer and editor
Julie A. Thomas
Kirkland, Caroline Matilda (11 January 1801–06 April 1864), writer and editor, was born in New York City, the daughter of Samuel Stansbury, a businessman, and Eliza Alexander. While the family’s financial situation fluctuated with her father’s various business ventures, Caroline, by virtue of the Stansburys’ high social standing, received an above-average education for a female in the early nineteenth century, chiefly in schools run by a Quaker aunt. She spent her early adulthood as a teacher, both before and after her marriage to William Kirkland, also an educator, in 1828. Together they founded a girls’ school in Geneva, New York, shortly after their marriage....
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Matthews, Thomas Stanley (1901-1991), magazine editor and memoirist
Paul G. Ashdown
Matthews, Thomas Stanley (16 January 1901–04 January 1991), magazine editor and memoirist, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Paul Clement Matthews, an Episcopal priest, later bishop of New Jersey, and Elsie Procter, an heiress of a founder of the Procter & Gamble Company. His grandfather ...
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McAlmon, Robert Menzies (1895-1956), writer and publisher
Sanford J. Smoller
McAlmon, Robert Menzies (09 March 1895–02 February 1956), writer and publisher, was born in Clifton, Kansas, the son of John Alexander McAlmon, a Presbyterian minister, and Bess Urquhart. McAlmon spent an unsettled boyhood in a succession of small towns in eastern South Dakota. In 1913 he entered the University of Minnesota but withdrew after one semester. He then roamed the upper Midwest working on surveying and grain-harvesting gangs and as a reporter and copywriter; he later based many short stories on these experiences. Moving to Los Angeles with his mother after his father’s death (1917?), he enrolled at the University of Southern California. But a desultory student, believing that college stifled rather than encouraged creativity and critical thinking, he never earned a degree....
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Mencken, H. L. (1880-1956), author, editor, and journalist
Fred Hobson
Mencken, H. L. (12 September 1880–29 January 1956), author, editor, and journalist, was born Henry Louis Mencken in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of August Mencken, a cigar manufacturer, and Anna Abhau. Having emigrated from Germany during the mid-nineteenth century, the Menckens and Abhaus had quickly adapted to life in the United States, and they provided a home more Victorian than German-American for their four children. Henry Mencken, the eldest, did attend a private German school for his earliest education, but he completed his formal education at Baltimore Polytechnic, a high school primarily responsible for producing engineers and technicians....
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Mencken, H. L. (1880-1956)
Maker: Carl Van Vechten
In
H. L. Mencken Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-42489).
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Morley, Christopher Darlington (1890-1957), man of letters and editor
Robert L. Gale
Morley, Christopher Darlington (05 May 1890–28 March 1957), man of letters and editor, was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, the son of Frank Morley, a mathematics professor at Haverford College, and Lilian Janet Bird, a musician and poet. She taught him to read, and he soon became a voracious reader. The family moved in 1900 to Baltimore, Maryland, where Morley’s father taught at Johns Hopkins University and Morley attended school and frequented the Enoch Pratt Library. He enrolled at Haverford College in 1906, published in the school’s ...
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Morley, Christopher Darlington (1890-1957)
Maker: Arnold Genthe
In
Christopher Morley Photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1930. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-G412-T-5716-017).
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Morris, Willie (1934-1999), writer and editor
Stacey Hamilton
Morris, Willie (29 November 1934–02 August 1999), writer and editor, was born William Weaks Morris in Jackson, Mississippi, the son of Henry Rae Morris, a gas station owner, and Marion Weaks Morris, a part-time piano teacher from a long line of Deep South gentility. Morris counted among his ancestors governors, senators, and the founders of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now W.Va.). Born into the “old, impoverished, whipped-down South” ( ...
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