Anna Strunsky

Anna Strunsky as a young woman.

Anna Strunsky Walling (1877–1964) was an early 20th-century American author and proponent of socialism. Her work focused on social problems, literature, and the labor movement.

Anna Strunsky was born into a Jewish family in Babinots (now - Babinovitch), Russia, March 21, 1877. Her family (her parents were Elias Strunsky and Anna Horowitz) emigrated to New York City when she was nine years old. After several years in New York, in 1893, the family moved to San Francisco, where her family lived in the home of her brother, Dr. Max Strunsky. Anna joined the Socialist Labor Party as a teenager and remained a socialist the rest of her life. Anna studied at Stanford University (1896–1898). While at Stanford, Anna met the young writer Jack London, and they became close friends. She and London spent a great deal of time together discussing social and political issues. Anna and her sister Rose became leading members of the turn of the 20th century San Francisco intellectual scene, part of a radical group of young Californian writers and artists known as "The Crowd" that included Jack London, Jim Whitaker, George Sterling, and others.[1] Anna's first book, The Kempton-Wace Letters, co-authored with Jack London, was published anonymously in 1903.[2] After his death in 1916, she published a memoir of her relationship with Jack London.[3]

In 1906 Anna and her sister Rose joined American socialist William English Walling in Russia as correspondents for his revolutionary news bureau. Anna and William married that year. They returned to the United States at the end of the year. Anna continued her writing, and her second book, Violette of Père Lachaise, was published in 1915.[4] William and Anna separated during World War I, in part due to their disagreement over the United States' role in the conflict.

Anna continued to write and advocate for socialism. She was a participant in Quaker social activity, and an active member of several liberal-left groups, including the War Resisters League, the League for Mutual Aid, the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, the League for Industrial Democracy, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which she and her husband had helped found.

She died on February 25, 1964 in New York. She was survived by her four children, Rosamund, Anna, Georgia and Hayden.

Legacy

In her 1931 autobiography, Emma Goldman wrote of meeting Anna and Rose in 1898,[5]

Among the most interesting people I met in San Francisco were two girls, the Strunsky sisters. Anna, the elder, had attended my lecture on Political Action. She had been indignant, I afterwards learned, because of my "unfairness to the socialists." The next day she came to visit me "for a little while," as she said. She remained all afternoon, and then invited me to her home. There I met a group of students among them Jack London, and the younger Strunsky girl, Rose, who was ill. Anna and I became great friends. She had been suspended from Leland Stanford University because she had received a male visitor in her room instead of in the parlour. I told Anna of my life in Vienna and of the men students with whom we used to drink tea, smoke, and discuss all through the night. Anna thought that the American woman would establish her right to liberty and privacy, once she secured the vote. I did not agree with her....

Anna Strunsky Walling Papers are held by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley,[6] the Yale University Library [7] and the Huntington Library.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Pratt, Norma Fain Anna Strunsky Walling, 1879–1964. Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. July 4, 2010.
  2. ↑ London, Jack and Strunsky, Anna. The Kempton-Wace Letters Mills & Boon, London, 1903.
  3. ↑ Walling, Anna Strunsky Memoirs of Jack London. The Masses, July 1917.
  4. ↑ Walling, Anna Strunsky Violette of Père Lachaise Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1915. Accessed on Internet Archive, 25 January 2015.
  5. ↑ Goldman, Emma Living My Life, In two volumes: Vol I, 1931. reprinted by Cosimo Books, 2008.
  6. ↑ Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Guide to the Anna Strunsky Walling Papers, 1900-1963.
  7. ↑ Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives. Guide to the Anna Strunsky Walling Papers, MS 1111, 1880-1968. Compiled: April 1982, revised: May 23, 2008
  8. ↑ Guide to literary manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, Calif. : H. E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1979) Papers of Anna Strunsky Walling, 1877-1958.

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