Dorr, Rheta (Louise) Childe 1866-1948

PERSONAL: Born November 2, 1866, in Omaha, NE; died August 8, 1948, in New Britain, PA; married John Pixley Dorr, 1892 (separated, 1898); children: Julian. Education: Graduated from Nebraska State University; attended Art Students' League, New York, NY, 1890.

CAREER: Journalist and writer. New York Evening Post, New York, NY, reporter, 1902-06; New York Evening Mail, New York, NY, reporter and war correspondent; Suffragist, editor.

WRITINGS:

(With Frances Knapp) The Thlinkets of Southeastern Alaska, Stone & Kimball (Chicago, IL), 1896.

What Eight Million Women Want, Small, Maynard & Company (Boston, MA), 1910.

Inside the Russian Revolution, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1917, reprinted, Arno Press (New York, NY), 1970.

A Soldier's Mother in France, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1918.

A Woman of Fifty, Funk & Wagnalls (New York, NY), 1924, reprinted, Arno Press (New York, NY) 1980.

Susan B. Anthony: The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation, Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York, NY), 1928, reprinted, AMS Press (New York, NY), 1970.

Drink: Coercion or Control, Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York, NY), 1929.

The Theory of a Child That Is Different, American Classical College Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1978.

Author of numerous articles for a variety of magazines and newspapers, including Harper's, Delineator, Current History, New York Times, Saturday Review of Literature, Good Housekeeping, and Collier's.

SIDELIGHTS: At the age of twelve, against her father's wishes, Rheta Childe Dorr attended a lecture on women's rights given by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. As she would later recall in her semi-fictionalized autobiography, A Woman of Fifty, the experience resulted in her allegiance to the suffragist cause. Her early attempts to obtain employment exposed her to the economic discrimination faced by women at that time and strengthened her commitment to secure her political independence. Along with Louise Bryant, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Bessie Beattie, Dorr also pioneered the way for women to become war correspondents.

As a war correspondent, Dorr covered the Russian Revolution of 1917 for the New York Evening Mail. However, when she decided to leave Russia after five months, the new communist authorities confiscated all of her notes. As a result, she wrote her book, Inside the Russian Revolution, entirely from memory. In the book she explained that Russia had become "a barbarous and half-insane land" and noted: "Oratory held the stupid populace spellbound while the Germans invaded the country, boosted Lenin into power and paved the way for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk." In Dorr's opinion, "Russia was done."

Dorr also went to France to serve as a war correspondent during World War I. The assignment had the added bonus of allowing her to visit her son, who was serving in the U.S. Army there. In addition to filing stories for the New York Evening Mail, the experience led her to write A Soldier's Mother in France for the mothers of soldiers. In American Newspaper Journalists, 1901-1925, Perry J. Ashley noted that Dorr's decision to write her 1924 autobiography A Woman of Fifty had less to do with relating her own story but rather to tell of "the plight of a woman living during that time." According to Ashley, this led to the book's inaccuracies about her own life. Nevertheless, Ashley noted, "the autobiography expresses ideas that are quite advanced for the time in which it was written."

What Eight Million Women Want was based in part on a series of articles Dorr wrote for Hampton's. Ashley quoted Dorr, who described her book as "a survey and analysis of the collective opinion of women as it had, up to that time, been expressed in what they tried to do in women's clubs, in suffrage associations, trade unions, Consumers' Leagues, and in the allied organizations known as the International Council of Women." In the book, Dorr claimed that women wanted equality between women and men, especially the right to vote. "Women have ceased to exist as a subsidiary class in the community. They are no longer wholly dependent, economically, intellectually, and spiritually, on a ruling class of men. They look on life with the eyes of reasoning adults," she added, "where once they regarded it as trusting children."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Ashley, Perry J., American Newspaper Journalists, 1901-1925, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial Times to the Present, Ungar, 1979.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 25: American Newspaper Journalists, 1901-1925, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Dorr, Rheta Childe, Inside the Russian Revolution, Arno Press (New York, NY), 1970.

Dorr, Rheta Childe, A Woman of Fifty, Arno Press (New York, NY) 1980.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Filler, Louis, Crusaders for American Liberalism, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1939.

Mott, Frank Luther, History of American Magazines, Volume 5, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1968.

Riegel, Robert E., American Feminists, University of Kansas Press (Lawrence, KS), 1963.

Ross, Ishbel, Ladies of the Press, Harper (New York, NY), 1936.

PERIODICALS

Boston Transcript, December 26, 1917, review of Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 7; January 24, 1925, review of A Woman of Fifty, p. 3.

Catholic World, fall, 1911, review of What Eight Million Women Want.

Literary Review, January 17, 1925, review of A Woman of Fifty, p. 6.

New York World, January 25, 1925, review of A Woman of Fifty, p. 8.

Outlook, January 9, 1918, review of Inside the Russian Revolution; January 21, 1925, review of A Woman of Fifty.

Review of Reviews, fall, 1918, review of Inside the Russian Revolution; December, 1927, "A Convert from Socialism."

Springfield Republican, January 4, 1918, review of Inside the Russian Revolution, p. 6.

ONLINE

GoddessCafe.com, http://www.goddesscafe.com/ (February 1, 2005), "Rheta Childe Dorr."

Spartacus Educational Web site, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ (February 1, 2005), "Rheta Childe Dorr."