McCormick, Anne O'Hare

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McCORMICK, Anne O'Hare

Born 16 May 1880, Wakefield, England; died 29 May 1954, New York, New York

Also wrote under: Anne O'Hare

Daughter of Thomas and Teresa Beatrice O'Hare; married Francis J. McCormick, 1910

As an infant Anne O'Hare McCormick was brought from England to Columbus, Ohio, by her American-born parents. Intellectually influenced by her Catholic mother, a poet and woman's-page editor, McCormick was educated in private schools in Ohio, graduating from the College of St. Mary of the Springs. Following in her mother's footsteps, she published children's feature articles and soon became an associate editor for her mother's employer, Cleveland's weekly Catholic Universe Bulletin.

After her marriage to an engineer and importer, McCormick resigned her editorship and traveled with her husband on his European business trips. She wrote several impressionistic articles about European countries in the aftermath of World War I for the New York Times Magazine.

In 1921, her dispatches from Europe, serious assessments of the rise of fascism in Italy, and of the role of Benito Mussolini (a figure then dismissed as a "posturing lout" by most journalists) impressed Times managing editor Carr V. Van Anda. He hired her as a foreign correspondent in 1922. She was the first woman hired as a regular contributor to the Times editorial page (1936) and the second woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize for journalism (in 1937, for her European correspondence).

Through the early 1950s she lectured in major U.S. cities, made radio broadcasts, and wrote "Abroad," a column based on reportage in Europe, Asia, and Africa. She also published editorials commenting on the American political scene.

The Hammer and the Scythe: Communist Russia Enters the Second Decade (1928) is based on articles McCormick originally wrote for the Times while traveling in Russia in the 1920s. McCormick reports her impressions of the Russian people, their conditions, and the clash of new and old. The Hammer and the Scythe is among the best of the books written by American journalists visiting Russia in the 1920s, but The World at Home: Selections from the Writings of Anne O'Hare McCormick (1956, edited by M. T. Sheehan), one of two collections of McCormick's Times columns posthumously edited by her personal friend, Marion Sheehan, better withstands the passage of time. Like other writers in the 1930s, McCormick "rediscovered America" in the pieces included in The World at Home. Her generalizations about the nation are convincing, particularly when examined together with the essays on Franklin Roosevelt. She connects small details that blend into larger patterns of the nation's character and dramatizes "that curious community…between the mind of the President and the mind of the people."

For Vatican Journal: 1921-1954 (1957, edited by M. T. Sheehan), Sheehan included Times pieces on the struggle between Mussolini's government and Pius XI, America's relations with the Vatican, the Church's persecuted position in Europe through the World War II era, and finally Roman Catholics' Cold War engagement in a fundamentally "spiritual" battle against communism for "domination over the soul." In the articles, McCormick often uses the first person, details specifics of the surroundings in which events occur, and recounts dramatically the scenes observed. Her own point of view is usually made clear, balanced against a "fair" presentation of the opposition's perspectives.

McCormick considered herself above all else a newspaperwoman. Aside from her book on Russia, she preferred to write "on top of the news while people were listening." Her reporting of foreign and domestic events was clear, incisive, and authoritative. It embodied her commitment to moral absolutes and professional standards of reporting. The body of correspondence (especially, warnings about fascism's rise in Europe), achievements as an influential political columnist, and eighteen years of service on the editorial board of America's most prestigious newspaper, secure McCormick an important place in the ranks of American journalists.

Bibliography:

Filene, P. G., Americans and the Soviet Experiment: 1917-1933 (1967). Hohenberg, J., Foreign Correspondence: The Great Reporters and Their Times (1964). Marzolf, M., Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (1977). Talese, G., The Kingdom and the Power (1966).

Reference works:

Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches, 1930-1947. Ohio Authors and Their Books (1962). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. TCA, TCAS.