Jane Grant

Jane Grant, around 1935

Jane Grant , actually Jeanette Cole (* 1892 in Joplin , Missouri , † 1972 in Litchfield , Connecticut ) was an American journalist and feminist as well as founder of the New York newspaper Women's Club and co-founder of The New Yorker magazine .

Life

Jeanette Cole came from a wealthy family and trained as a singer. When she was 16, she moved to New York City and took the name Jane Grant . To support a living, she wrote several articles for The New York Times . She soon became close friends with the critic Alexander Woollcott and the writer Janet Flanner .

Alexander Woollcott and Jane Grant in France, around 1919

When the First World War broke out , Grant came to France with a Broadway group , where she joined the American Red Cross in Paris and was involved in troop support. Here she met her first husband, the journalist Harold Ross (1892–1951), and married him in May 1919. At the same time, Woollcott was leading her to the literary circle at the Algonquin Hotel , called the Algonquin Round Table , a loose group of journalists, Writers and actors, a.

In 1921, Grant founded the women's rights organization Lucy Stone League together with Ruth Hale , whose aim, among other things, was that women can keep their maiden name after marriage. Her contributions to feminist thought formed a central bridge between feminism of the 1920s and that of the 1970s. Their marriage failed and they divorced in 1928. As a journalist for The New York Times , she was way ahead of her time on women's issues and thus established her later success. Jane Grant played a pivotal role in the development of New York magazine.

In 1939 she married William B. Harris (1890-1981), editor of Fortune magazine . In the following years her activities in the women's movement continued to increase, which led to a reactivation of the Lucy Stone League . She continued her work for women's rights in the 1960s in the movements of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and International Council of Women (ICW).

Jane Grant died of a heart attack at her country estate in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her husband set up a foundation at the University of Oregon to help young women study. After his death in 1981, he bequeathed $ 3.5 million to the foundation that bears his late wife's name.

literature

• Beverley G. Merrick: Jane Grant, The New Yorker, and Ross: A Lucy Stoner Practices Her Own Style of Journalism , The Serials Librarian (1999)
• Jane Grant and Janet Flanner: Ross, The New Yorker and Me , Reynal (1968)

Web links

• Jane Grant and CSWS (English)
• Lucy Stone League (English)