Mary Heaton Vorse

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Front cover of I've Come to Stay (1919).
Front cover of I've Come to Stay (1919).

Mary Heaton Vorse or Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien (11th October, 1874 - 1966) was a U.S. suffragette, journalist, labor activist, theatre patron, and feminist.

Contents

[edit] Life

Mary Heaton Vorse was born in New York City. She married three times: Albert White Vorse (d. 1910) in 1898, Joseph O'Brien (d. 1915) in 1912, and Robert Minor in 1920.[1]


[edit] activism and journalism

She was outspokenly active in peace and social justice causes, such as women's suffrage, civil rights, pacifism (specifically including opposition to World War I), socialism, child labor, infant mortality, labor disputes, and affordable housing. She was instrumental in forming the Women's Peace Party in January 1915 in Washington, D.C. Newspapers and journals she wrote for included the New York Post, New York World, McCall's, Harper's Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, Masses, New Masses, New Republic, and McClure's Magazine, as well as various news services.[2] She participated in and reported on the Lawrence textile strike, the steel strike of 1919, the textile workers strike of 1934, and coal strikes in Harlan County, Kentucky.[3] and [4]

[edit] novels

She was also a popular novelist for several decades and published poetry as well. Her writing helped her raise three children without a husband. She wrote 18 books including: The Breaking-In of a Yachtsman's Wife (1908), The Very Little Person (1911), The Autobiography of an Elderly Woman (1911), The Heart's Country (1913), The Prestons (1918), I've Come to Stay (1919), Growing Up (1920), Men and Steel (1921), Fraycar's Fist (1923), A Footnote to Folly (1935), Labor's New Millions (1938) and Time and the Town (1942).[1]

[edit] theatre

Most of her adult life was based in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In late 1915, she purchased Lewis Wharf on Provincetown Harbor and joined with other left-wing writers, including Floyd Dell, Eugene O'Neill, John Reed, George Cram Cook, Edna St.Vincent Millay, Susan Glaspell, and Louise Bryant to form the Provincetown Players.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Overton, Grant. The Women Who Make Our Novels. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 318. 
  2. ^ Glossary of People:Vo. marxists.org. Retrieved on February 13, 2007.
  3. ^ Mary Heaton Vorse. spartacus.schoonet.co.uk. Retrieved on February 13, 2007.
  4. ^ Garrison, Dee. Mary Heaton Vorse: The Life of an American Insurgent. 

[edit] Selected Writings

[edit] External links

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