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 ...
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Anderson, Margaret (1886-1973), editor and author
Holly A. Baggett
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Anderson, Margaret (1886-1973)
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Braden, Anne (1924-2006), civil rights activist and journalist
Catherine Fosl
Braden, Anne (28 July 1924–06 March 2006), civil rights activist and journalist, was born Anne Gambrell McCarty in Louisville, Kentucky, to Gambrell and Anita McCarty. Because her father was a traveling salesman, she grew up in various southern states, but mostly in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama. Her conservative white Episcopal parents fully embraced the norms of southern racial hierarchy, and they remained comfortable throughout the Depression years of her childhood, but the young Anne, idealistic and devoutly religious, was troubled by the suffering around her. After graduating from Anniston High School in 1941, she left home to study literature and journalism at two Virginia women’s colleges, first Stratford Junior College and then Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, where she discovered the life of the mind in a serious way and first met critics of racial segregation. In 1945, upon graduation from Randolph-Macon, she returned to postwar Alabama as a newspaper reporter, first for the ...
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Cantwell, Mary (10 May 1930–01 February 2000), writer
Ann T. Keene
Cantwell, Mary (10 May 1930–01 February 2000), writer, was born Mary Lee Cantwell in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of Leo Cantwell, a man of Scottish descent who worked as a production manager in a rubber plant, and Mary Lonergan Cantwell, a former teacher and the descendant of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants. As described in her nostalgic memoir ...
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Childs, George William (1829-1894), publisher, biographer, and philanthropist
David Boocker
Childs, George William (12 May 1829–03 February 1894), publisher, biographer, and philanthropist, was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The names of his parents are not known. In Recollections (1890), his autobiography, Childs shrouds his family origins in mystery, making no reference to his parents or early childhood, beginning instead with an explanation of how he had had from a young age “a rather remarkable aptitude for business.” At twelve he worked a summer job as an errand boy in a Baltimore bookstore for two dollars a week. He reflects in ...
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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
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Dennis, Peggy (1909-1993), communist Party activist and journalist
Amanda Khiterman and Michal R. Belknap
Dennis, Peggy (01 January 1909–25 September 1993), communist Party activist and journalist, was born Regina Karasick in New York City to Meyer and Berta Karasick, Jewish-Russian revolutionaries who in 1904 had traded the confines of czarist oppression for the capitalist society they despised. Determined never to assimilate once they settled in America, the Karasick family remained active in the socialist movement, even after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, which dashed their hopes of returning home....
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Gilbreth, Frank B., Jr. (1911-2001), author and newspaper columnist
Jane Lancaster
Gilbreth, Frank B., Jr. (17 March 1911–18 February 2001), author and newspaper columnist, was born Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr., in Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Frank Bunker Gilbreth, an efficiency expert, and Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who worked with her husband on time and motion study. At a time when better-educated parents had fewer children, and politicians such as ...
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Graham, Sheilah (15 December 1904?–17 November 1988), author and columnist
Josephine McQuail
Graham, Sheilah (15 December 1904?–17 November 1988), author and columnist, was born Lily Shiel in London, England. Her parents’ names are unknown. Her father, a tailor, died of tuberculosis while she was still a baby, and her mother, a cook in an institution, was forced to send Lily to the East London Home for Orphans when she was six. At the orphanage, she was constantly hungry and subject to humiliations such as having her hair shorn to protect against lice. Her mother, terminally ill, called her home to help care for her when Lily was fourteen years old and died of cancer three years later....
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Gunther, John (1901-1970), foreign correspondent and writer
Morrell Heald
Gunther, John (30 August 1901–29 May 1970), foreign correspondent and writer, was born in Chicago, the son of Eugene M. Gunther, a salesman, and Lisette Shoeninger, a schoolteacher. His mother stimulated Gunther’s interest in literature and history; at eleven he already was compiling a personal encyclopedia of world affairs. The wide-ranging interests, energy, and enthusiasm displayed at this early age characterized his personal and professional life. At the University of Chicago, where he graduated in 1922, he became literary editor of the campus newspaper while building his personal library by reviewing books for other journals as well. Eager for a writer’s career, he headed for Europe to soak up continental culture without waiting to receive his bachelor’s degree....
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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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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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McElroy, John (1846-1929), journalist and author
Susan McMichaels
McElroy, John (25 August 1846–12 October 1929), journalist and author, was born in Greenup County, Kentucky, the son of Robert McElroy, an ironmaster, and Mary Henderson. The family background was Scotch-Irish. He left home at the age of nine, after his father’s death and his mother’s remarriage, dropping his middle name, Henderson, which was his mother’s maiden name. He worked his way to St. Louis, where he found a job as a printer’s devil. Befriended by journeymen printers, he learned how to set the type for popular songs and sold the songs on the streets of St. Louis. Through a program of reading and independent study he remedied the meagerness of his formal education. He was aided in this project by a photographic memory. He could recite most of Shakespeare’s plays, read French and German, and translate Greek and Hebrew. When the country was moving toward war, he traveled to Chicago. In 1862 he enlisted in ...
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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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Thompson, Era Bell (1906-1986), author and editor
Gerald G. Newborg
Thompson, Era Bell (10 August 1906–30 December 1986), author and editor, was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the daughter of Stewart C. Thompson and Mary Logan. In 1914 she moved with her family to Driscoll, North Dakota, where her father was a farmer and, from 1917 to 1921, a private messenger for Governor ...
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White, William Allen (10 February 1868–29 January 1944), journalist and author
Sally F. Griffith
White, William Allen (10 February 1868–29 January 1944), journalist and author, was born in Emporia, Kansas, the son of Allen White, a physician and merchant, and Mary Ann Hatten, a schoolteacher. A year later the family moved sixty miles southwest to the frontier village Eldorado (now El Dorado), where Allen White quickly became the leading citizen and most energetic booster; he was the town’s mayor when he died in 1882. William Allen would emulate his father’s absorption in community and civic life. He attended the College of Emporia in 1884, but, seeking a skill to help pay his way, he found a job as printer’s devil for a local newspaper. Quickly graduating from compositor to cub reporter, White worked for newspapers throughout the rest of his university career, which included a second year in Emporia and four years at the University of Kansas. He left without a degree in 1890 to manage the ...
