Marguerite Martyn: America's Forgotten Journalist

Her voice is heard again. So are the people she interviewed for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch between 1905 and 1919.Not only did Marguerite Martyn report and write, but she also carried an artist's pad with her and sketched her subjects as she talked with them.- She interviewed Williams Jennings Bryan at a streetcar stop, walked up the hill to his home and interviewed his wife, lawyer and amanuensis Ellen Baird Bryan.- She and artist Charles Dana Gibson sketched each other.- St. Louis political boss Jeptha D. Howe waggled his finger at her and pronounced "No possibility for women's suffrage!"- Missouri State Representative John Burgin ran a marriage bureau on the legislative floor and bluntly asked her, "Are you married?"Martyn wrote about the dreams of a teenage worker who lost both arms in a factory accident. She illustrated street kids building sand castles on a torn-up downtown street. She ducked between police lines to cover the 1912 Republican National Convention, and the next year she met incoming President Wilson in the White House, who blankly called her Mr. Martyn. She interviewed suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst and birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger, and she sought out religious leaders like Archbishop James Gibbons to see what they thought about the role of women in modern society. Then she drew them.Author George Garrigues, a former journalist and journalism professor, has edited and curated Martyn's work to show us a time when "big hats" were all the rage, rebellious teenagers hung out at "lid clubs." and women were fighting for the right to vote.This book is an exploration of the past, when trust was an American hallmark. When a reporter could knock on the door of a candidate for President of the United States, send in her card, and expect to be ushered inside.See the Progressive era through the eyes of one of the few women journalists of her time, and how she changed both herself and the world around her.