Mary Heaton Vorse : the life of an American insurgent / Dee Garrison.

Black and white photographs showing events from the life of Mary Heaton Vorse, including portraits of Mary Heaton Vorse and imagery of police and military personal participating in strike breaking during the Lawrence Textile Strike.

Includes bibliographical references (371-377) and index.

Part one: 1874-1910. One. Amherst -- Two. La Bohemienne -- Three. Completed circle --

Part two: 1910-1915. Four. Crossroads -- Five. Banner of revolt -- Six. Women's peace, men's war --

Part three: 1916-1919. Seven. Down the road again -- Eight. Footnote to folly -- Nine. The left fork --

Part four: 1919-1928. Ten. Union activist -- Eleven. Smashup -- Twelve. The long eclipse --

Part five: 1929-1941. Thirteen. War in the South -- Fourteen. Holdings the line -- Fifteen. Washington whirl -- Sixteen. Labor's new millions --

Part six: 1942-1966. Seventeen. The last lap -- Eighteen. Serene plateau.

"The life of Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) reads like a chronology of American radicalism in the first half of the twentieth century. The foremost pioneer of labor journalism in the United State and a prominent participant in the women's universal suffrage movement, Vorse spent her life struggling for libertarian socialism, feminism, and world peace. Her friends and colleagues were among the most famous writers, artists, and intellectuals of the time. Her sizable FBI file was maintained until she was eighty-two years years old. And yet, this is the first full-length biography of Mary Heaton Vorse. [Vorse wrote] "I love my golden wings and I want to fly right into the sun until they are all draggled and battered," wrote Vorse in 1896. A rebel at a young age, she fled her wealthy New England family and settled in Greenwich Village in the early 1900s. As an editor for The Masses and a charter member of the Liberal Club, The Provincetown Players, and the Heterodoxy Club, Vorse was intimately involved with the political cultural, and feminist leaders of the Left. Widowed twice, she wrote magazine stories to support her three children and became, for several decades, one of the most popular writers of women's fiction in the United States. As a labor journalist and war correspondent, she traveled to Lenin's Moscow and Hitler's Germany; she participated in the Lawrence Textile Strike, the Great Steel Strike of 1919, and the uprisings in Gastonia, North Carolina, and Bloody Harlan County in Kentucky. She reported the early struggles and rise of the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] in the 1930s. Her commitment to feminism led to her presence at women's rallies in Europe and America; her unique contribution to the journalism of her time was to give consistent attention to the special concerns of women and their role in the labor movement. Dee Garrison observes, "Perhaps Mary Heaton Vore's most remarkable achievement was her ability to sense the moment and find the center where action would occur." This compelling biography traces the life of a woman whose presence affected workers and feminists throughout the world, whose writing were bestsellers, and whose struggle with the dual role of mother and professional woman presaged today's quandary over "having it all." Mary Heaton Vorse: The Life of an American Insurgent restores and important heroine to her place in American and feminist history. Dee Garrison is Professor of History at Rutgers University." --from dust jacket.