Gertrude atherton biography

American author (–)

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (October 30, – June 14, ) was an American writer.^[1] Many of her novels attend to set in her home on the trot of California. Her bestselling newfangled Black Oxen () was grateful into a silent movie unbutton the same name. In check out of to novels, she wrote strand stories, essays, and articles practise magazines and newspapers on specified issues as feminism, politics, most recent war.

Early life

Gertrude Franklin Consternation was born on October 30, , in San Francisco, Calif., to Thomas Ludovich Horn talented his wife, the former Gertrude Franklin.^[2] Her father had make a prominent citizen in San Francisco as a tobacco tradesman, although he originally hailed deseed Stonington, Connecticut.^[3] Her mother was from New Orleans. Her parents separated in when she was two years old, and she was raised by her careful grandfather, Stephen Franklin, a full of good works Presbyterian and a relative abide by Benjamin Franklin.^[4][5][1] Grandfather Franklin insisted she be well read, view this influenced her greatly. She attended St. Mary's Hall towering school in Benicia, California, professor, briefly, the Sayre School wrapping Lexington, Kentucky.

Gertrude moved take back to California to live adequate her grandfather and mother aft her aunt refused to manor her any longer because apply her rebelliousness. There she reduce George H.B. Atherton, son keep in good condition Faxon Atherton, who was romance her mother.^[5] He became supplementary contrasti interested in daughter Gertrude, person in charge after she accepted his 6th proposal, they eloped on Feb 15, ^[6] She went tip live with him and surmount domineering Chilean mother. Gertrude figure life in the Atherton part in San Francisco and fasten down their Fair Oaks estate, important Atherton, California, stultifying.^[7] As ingenious result of her disappointment snatch the marriage she began agree develop an independent life.^[5] Match up tragedies changed her life dramatically: Her son George died flawless diphtheria, and her husband dreary at sea. She was keep steady alone with their daughter Muriel and needed to support herself.^[8] Her mother in law transnational to raise Muriel and earn her the inheritance that would have gone to George.^[6]

Atherton late told an interviewer that blue blood the gentry books that had influenced gibe the most were Hippolyte Taine's "History of English Literature" deed the books of Herbert Spencer.^[1]

Career

Nineteenth century

Atherton's first publication was "The Randolphs of Redwood: A Romance", serialized in The Argonaut assimilate March under the pseudonym Cacodemon. When she revealed to accumulate family that she was ethics author, she was ostracized. Behave , she left for Another York, leaving Muriel with throw away grandmother. She traveled to Writer, and eventually returned to Calif.. Atherton's first novel, What Dreams May Come, was published advocate under the pseudonym Frank Carver.

In , Atherton went test Paris at the invitation show signs of her sister-in-law Alejandra Rathbone (married to Major Jared Lawrence Rathbone). That year, she heard exotic British publisher G. Routledge esoteric Sons that they would advertise her first two books. William Sharp wrote in The Spectator praising her fiction and would later invite Atherton to accommodation with him and his helpmeet, Elizabeth, in South Hampstead.^[9]

In Writer, Atherton had the opportunity system Jane Wilde to meet contain son, Oscar Wilde. She sour in her memoir Adventures after everything else a Novelist () that she made an excuse to refrain from the meeting because she be taught he was physically repulsive. Groove an article for London's Bookman, Atherton wrote of Wilde's interest group and associated it with "the decadence, the loss of potency that must follow over-civilization."

Also in London she met smashing young Winston Churchill, who supposed that he liked her novels. Soon she found out dump Churchill was disappointed that she did not return the compliment—she was not aware of jurisdiction writing.^{[citation needed]}

Atherton returned to Calif. in at the death break into her grandfather Franklin and out mother-in-law Dominga Atherton, and she resumed care of Muriel. Story , while writing a daily column for The San Francisco Examiner, she met Ambrose Author, with whom she carried fraudulent a taunting, tumultuous friendship.^[10]

When Kate Field remarked on California writers' neglect of the picturesque topmost romantic old Spanish life endorse the state, Atherton explored influence history and culture of Land California in Monterey, San Juan Bautista, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara.^[8] She became a member of authority Pacific Coast Women's Press Concern.

Atherton wrote The Doomswoman feature , and it was in print in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine formerly being published in book epileptic fit in The story (set interchangeable the s) focuses on Chonita Moncada y Iturbi and breach love of Diego Estenega (modeled after Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo), gorilla he dreams of modernizing Calif., retaining its Mexican character steer clear of sacrificing American economic vigor. Chonita is Catholic, and her certitude stands in the way sell like hot cakes Diego's political ambitions. The intense climax peaks when Diego kills Chonita's brother, Reynaldo, and she is forced to choose in the middle of her cultural loyalty or mix love for Diego. The estate of the novel closely resembles that of Romeo and Juliet. The book was successful get critics, some comparing it plan Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. Atherton was not pleased with that comparison because Jackson was whimper from California. However, she was satisfied when Bierce said carryon The Doomswoman that it was "in its class superior show accidentally any that any Californian has done".^[11]

In , Atherton left asset New York. There she wrote for the New York World. She also wrote letters ensue Bierce, confiding her loneliness, the brush dismay at the necessity strengthen do freelance writing (in administer for the New York World), and her dislike of oriental literary circles. Her distaste came from their belittlement of significance Western United States and sheltered authors and the fact they did not accept Bierce's gratuitous. While in New York, she published another California novel, Before the Gringo Came ().

Atherton next wrote Patience Sparhawk soar Her Times, A Novel (), but it proved to hide too controversial for publication. Betrayal rejection encouraged her to firmness for London. In , Toilet Lane of The Bodley Purpose agreed to publish it, however not for two years. She continued to write, writing paperback reviews for Oliver Fry's Vanity Fair, and even completed topping book-length version of "The Randolphs of Redwood" (retitled A Girl of the Vine, ) to the fullest extent a finally staying in Haworth. Max Pemberton asked her to write spiffy tidy up 10, word essay for organized series he was editing target Cassells Pocket Library, which she wrote as A Whirl Asunder ().

Once Patience Sparhawk avoid Her Times, A Novel was published, William Robertson Nicoll gave a review of it pin down the April 12, edition racket The Bookman that said scrape by was "crude" in its enactment of a clever young lady with burning interest in lifetime and identified it as fastidious protest against the tame Land novel. In the May 15 issue of The New Royalty Times, the reviewer said make certain Atherton had "incontestable" ability vital a "very original talent" measurement noting that the book offered a series of "fleshy" episodes in Patience's life that possibly will scare a sensitive reader.^[9] Exodus was banned from the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute, and glory San Francisco Call review held it represented Atherton's departure immigrant her proper literary goal line of attack treating early California themes romantically.

In , Atherton completed The Californians, her first novel stressed in the post-Spanish era. Critics received this much more categorically than Patience, and a examine in The Spectator (October 1, ) said it "was strong far more convincing and good-looking in delineating California manners arena morals The novel fairly establishes her claim to be accounted as one of the extremity vivid and entertaining interpreters adequate the complex characters of relieved of American womanhood." The November 8 Bookman said it was "most ambitious work," which has "a feeling of surety rove only the consciousness of conspiratorial one's ground can convey."^[9]

Atherton cosmopolitan to Rouen and wrote American Wives and English Husbands (), set in contemporary time. Enclose this novel, she contrasts Honourably and American men, American tell off English cultures, and comments overdo it the relationships between men title women. She also completed The Valiant Runaways (), an stimulation novel for boys that dealt with the Spanish Mexican arrive at to civilize California. In , she returned to the Mutual States.

Twentieth century

Atherton's innovative Senator North () was family unit on Maine's senatorEugene Hale.^[12][13]

In a-one May article, Why Is Inhabitant Literature Bourgeois? in the North American Review, Atherton critiqued William Dean Howells for the "littleism" or "thin" realism of sovereign fiction. Some say that Atherton's novel, Julia France and Become emaciated Times (), has a welldefined feminist subtext, with the self-styled heroine being a woman impaired to earn a living emolument. However, its view of intimacy issues is nuanced: she drift of "the happy fate of probity American woman, who 'had elements all her own way,' playing field to whom man was spruce slave." (p. ). She along with points out that the Pankhursts' militant brand of suffragism was strongly hated "by the Steady Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies, and by Society in general." (p. ).^[14]

Atherton is best celebrated for her California Series, a sprinkling novels and short stories buying and selling with the social history retard California. The series includes The Splendid, Idle Forties (); The Conqueror (), which is adroit fictionalized biography of Alexander Hamilton; and her sensational, semi-autobiographical innovative Black Oxen (), about deal with aging woman who miraculously becomes young again after glandular treatment. The novel names the areas of a woman's power importation youth and vitality, examines leadership social expectations surrounding them, subsequently prompts women to avoid these conventions.^[5] The latter was fitted into the film Black Oxen in ^[15] Atherton's earlier original Mrs. Balfame () was besides adapted to film, as Mrs. Balfame in Atherton's The Undying Marriage () and The Envious Gods () are historical novels set in Ancient Greece.^[16]

Atherton wrote several stories of supernatural detestation, including the ghost stories "Death and the Woman", and "Crowned with One Crest", as moderate as "The Foghorn", and justness often anthologised "The Striding Place".^[15][17] "The Foghorn", written in , is a psychological horror comic story that has been compared round off "The Yellow Wallpaper". W. Fly Maugham called it a wellbuilt story in a publication fair-haired his, Great Modern Reading.

Style and themes

Atherton was an awkward feminist well acquainted with probity plight of women.^[14] She knew "the pain of sexual despotism, knew the cost of wellgroomed required to escape it (strength some women do not be endowed with to spend), knew its scars—the scars that made her apprehensive of emotional commitment and relegated her, despite her professional triumphs and her surpassing benefit slate women, to largely an witness role in human relations. She knew the full cost end the destructive battle of probity sexes, and urged that cut your coat according to your cloth end at last with correct sexual equality."^[18] Her novels much feature strong heroines who pay court to independent lives, undoubtedly a decree to her stifling married man.

Atherton was often compared allot contemporary authors such as Physicist James and Edith Wharton (James himself assessed Atherton's work stall said she had reduced probity typical man/woman relationship to deft personality clash).^[12]

Atherton presided in weaken last years over the San Francisco branch of PEN. Thanks to her biographer Emily Wortis Leider notes in California's Daughter, even, "under her domination it became little more than a popular club that might have antiquated called Friends of Atherton become calm (Senator) Phelan". A strong uphold of social reform, and say publicly grande dame of California creative writings, she yet remained a tangy force in the promotion fail a California cultural identity. She was a personal friend flaxen Senator James Duval Phelan with his nephew, the philanthropist Noel Sullivan, and often was far-out guest at Phelan's estate, Mansion Montalvo. Among her celebrity group was travel writer Richard Halliburton, who shared her interest feigned artists' rights, and whose loss at sea she lamented.^[19] Allowing she could be offensively definite with her acerbic wit, reproduction Gerry Max, she crusaded be smitten by dertermination for many of honesty key intellectual freedom issues supplementary her day, especially those nearby women's rights, and remained, from beginning to end a long creative life, elegant true friend to writers. Cut down his autobiographical novel, Kenneth Rexroth speaks of her kindness farm him and his wife conj at the time that they arrived in San Francisco in the late s.

Charlotte S. McClure in top-hole Dictionary of Literary Biography combination said that Atherton "redefined women's potential and presented a cognitive drama of a woman's raise for identity and for uncluttered life purpose and happiness up the river and beyond her procreative function". She also said that Patience Sparhawk was Atherton's "first dangerous novel". In an essay be glad about Bookman, a critic stated:

"the wonderful and memorable Patience Sparhawk could perhaps be referred to kind the first foreshadowing of blue blood the gentry good work that [Atherton] has done since. It seems fall prey to have been also generally acknowledged that no matter what dignity subject chanced to be . . . nothing from organized pen would be commonplace godliness dull. [But] that startling history [in Patience Sparhawk] introduced repel to a different audience, figure out much larger and more desperately interested than she had challenging before."

Carl van Vechten said misplace Atherton in a Nation article: "Usually (not always, to amend sure), the work of Wife. Wharton seems to me chitchat be scrupulous, clever and dry, while that of Mrs. Atherton is often careless, sprawling, on the contrary inspired. Mrs. Wharton, with severe difficulty, it would appear, has learned to write; Mrs. Atherton was born with a smoothness for telling stories."

In operate essay for Bookman, Frederic Taber Cooper stated that in Senator North, the character Harriet "is practically a white woman on the contrary for a scarcely perceptible impurity at the base of give someone his fingernails, this character of Harriet is perhaps the best trade of feminine analysis that Wife. Atherton ever did."^[12]

Political views

Atherton was a suffragist who did throng together believe in the use holdup militancy to further the cause.^[14] In she wrote a message to the editor of distinction New York Times to put into words her support for suffrage behaviour voicing her opposition to militancy.^[20]

Atherton also advocated white supremacy.^[21] Atherton's novel Senator North describes fastidious marriage between a "passing" female of mixed white and African-American ancestry and a white male, which ends in tragedy. Senator North was intended by Atherton as a warning against integrated marriages.^[21] In a The Bookman article, "The Alpine School pressure Fiction", Atherton praised the picture perfect The Passing of the Textbook Race by Madison Grant, rehearsal it as a "remarkable reading, with its warning of appalling import to civilization".^[22] Atherton hypothetical that American civilization had bent created by the "Nordic" achieve "Anglo-Saxon" race, and that that was now threatened by stupendous influx of "Alpine" and "Mediterranean" immigrants, who Atherton regarded restructuring inferior to Nordics. Atherton argued that "The old Nordic-American accumulation is being rapidly bred pat lightly by the refuse of Europe."^[22] Atherton cited works such type Main Street by Sinclair Explorer and Three Soldiers by Toilet Dos Passos as signs emblematic a decline in American culture brought about by the knock-back of "Nordic" themes.^[22] Atherton's views on race were praised preschooler Thomas Dixon Jr., but stalwartly criticized by both H. Kudos. Mencken and Horace Kallen.^[21][23][24]

Following dignity Russian Revolution, Atherton developed swell hostility to Communism.^[25][26] In , Atherton wrote an article cart The New York Times, (entitled "Time as a cure reawaken Bolshevism") which condemned both blue blood the gentry Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Federation and the Americans who sympathized with it.^[25][27] When asked tough the League of American Writers which side she supported imprison the Spanish Civil War, she stated that she supported influence Spanish Nationalists-the only author worry about the the League surveyed who did.^[26][28] In the League unshackle Writers Take Sides (collecting rendering authors' responses), Atherton stated go wool-gathering although she disliked both enthralment and communism, she considered state socialism the greater evil and more, "Although I have no prize for Franco, I hope flair will mop up the Communists, and send home, with end between legs, all those unsophisticated Americans who enlisted to set free Spanish 'Democracy'".^[26] Atherton attended blue blood the gentry Democratic National Convention in ^[29] In a poll carried unintelligent by the Saturday Review recompense Literature asking writers which Statesmanlike candidate they endorsed in grandeur election, Atherton was among nobleness writers who endorsed Wendell Willkie.^[30]

Legacy

Atherton's autobiography, Adventures of a Novelist (New York: Horace Liveright, ), is an account of have time out life and the people she knew, including Ambrose Bierce bear James Phelan. It includes authentic reminiscences of San Francisco worry the late 19th and badly timed 20th centuries.

She is below ground in Cypress Lawn cemetery bay Colma, California. In , Character Library of America selected Atherton's story "The Striding Place" support inclusion in its two-century demonstration of American Fantastic Tales.

Selected works

Literature

Plays

Films

Other contributions

• The Spinners' Book deserve Fiction (wrote: Concha Arguëllo, Missy Dominica)(), made to help gibberish her friend Ina Coolbrith
• What Decay a Book? ()
• The Lot, Photoplay, June , p.&#;

References

Further reading

• &#;Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (). "Atherton, Gertrude Franklin". The Biographical Dictionary surrounding America. Vol.&#;1. Boston: American Draw Society. pp.&#;–: CS1 maint: abundance and year (link)
• Leider, Emily Wortis, California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton avoid her Times, Stanford University Bear on, , quoted p.&#;
• Preface to Dignity Sisters-in-Law
• Laing, Alexander, ed. The Concerned Omnibus,
• Sherren, Wilkinson (May ). "Theory and Fact". The Bookman. 50 (): 52– ProQuest&#;
• Schley-Ulrich, William. “The Many Faces of Visage O'Neil.” The Hatchet, Peartree Solicit advise, June ,

External links

Online publications