Bacon, Josephine Dodge (1876–1961)

American writer of juvenile and adult satire. Name variations: Josephine Dodge Daskam. Born Josephine Dodge Daskam on February 17, 1876, in Stamford, Connecticut; died on July 29, 1961, in Tannersville, New York; daughter of Anne (Loring) and Horace Sawyer Daskam; graduated Smith College, 1898; married Selden Bacon (a lawyer), on July 25, 1903; children: Anne, Deborah, and Selden, Jr.

Selected works:

Smith College Stories (1900); Sister's Vacation and Other Girls' Stories (1900); The Imp and the Angel (1901); Fables for the Fair (1901); The Madness of Philip (1902); The Memoirs of a Baby (1904); The Inheritance (1912); Square Peggy (1919); Truth o' Women (1923); Counterpoint (1927); Kathy (1933); Girl Wanted! (1936); Cassie-on-the-Job (1937); The House By the Road (1937); The World in His Heart (1941).

According to Josephine Dodge Bacon, no societal ill was more insidious nor more treatable than the breakdown of a family due to inferior homemaking. "The only 'cause' which interests me at all in connection with women is the systematic education for duties and responsibilities inevitably assumed by the great majority of them," she wrote in Good Housekeeping (October 1911). Maintaining that attention to such details would eliminate moral disintegration in other areas of the family, Bacon directed the majority of her writing to this cause, and her work was called feminist for its focus on women's efforts to find a place in the world.

Raised in middle- to upper-class Stamford, Connecticut, Bacon never lived outside the Northeast. In Massachusetts, she attended Smith College and graduated in 1898. She then moved to New York City and wrote stories for magazines and journals, most notably the Saturday Evening Post. The year 1900 marked her first major success, with the publication of Smith College Stories, a collection of short fiction. Early work, under the name Josephine Dodge Daskam, was prolific, approximately two books a year. Her July 25, 1903, marriage to prominent New York attorney Selden Bacon slowed her pace and changed her name, but the year following their marriage was her most successful. The Memoirs of a Baby (1904), a satire on child rearing, was a bestseller; no other Bacon work would equal its popularity, though her subject matter remained similarly concerned with women and family.

The Bacons moved to suburban Westchester, New York, where they raised three children, two of whom became physicians. While her daughters were of Scouting age, Josephine went to work for the national Girl Scouts, an organization which she felt provided an early and vital introduction to home-economics skills. From 1915 to 1925, Bacon served on the executive committee of the Girl Scouts, and as editor of the official handbook and the Girl Scout Magazine. Summering in Tannersville, New York, she became a lifelong participant in the Onteora Club, an amateur theatrical group; she also coordinated a permanent collection for Onteora, "A Hundred Years of American Art," which featured Catskills painters. Further free time was spent on recording books for the Lighthouse for the Blind. All the while, Bacon wrote. She would publish more than 35 books in 60 years.

In 1946, on their 43rd wedding anniversary, Selden Bacon died. Shortly after, Josephine made a new winter home at 130 East 57th Street in New York City. She was summering in Tannersville when she died at age 86.

Crista Martin , freelance writer, Boston, Massachusetts