Anna Marcet Haldeman
Marcet Haldeman-Julius | |
|---|---|
| Born | Anna Marcet Haldeman 18 June 1887 Girard, Kansas, U.S. |
| Died | 13 February 1941 (aged 53) Girard, Kansas, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Feminist, actress, playwright, civil rights supporter, editor, author, bank executive |
| Years active | 1910–1941 |
| Known for | Feminism, civil rights activism, banking leadership |
Marcet Haldeman-Julius (born Anna Marcet Haldeman; June 18, 1887 – February 13, 1941) was a prominent American feminist, actress, playwright, civil rights supporter, editor, author, and bank executive.
Life and career
Originally from Girard, Kansas, she was the daughter of Dr. Henry Winfield Haldeman and Alice Haldeman. She was also the sibling of noted social reformer Jane Addams, with whom she maintained a lifelong close bond.
Marcet pursued her education at Rockford Seminary for Young Ladies and Chicago’s Dearborn Seminary before enrolling at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. There, she developed a strong friendship with poet Marianne Moore. After three years of study, she left to focus on acting and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1910. Between 1910 and 1915, performing under the name Jean Marcet, she worked with the Orpheum Players and various stock theater groups in multiple cities.
Following the passing of her mother in 1915, Marcet returned to Girard to oversee the family’s Bank of Girard. That same year, she founded The Jolly Club in nearby Radley to assist immigrant youth employed in local mines by offering English instruction and vocational training. By 1921, this initiative had grown into several clubs and a school, drawing inspiration from her summers spent at Hull House alongside Jane Addams.
In 1916, she married activist and publisher Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. At Jane Addams’s recommendation, they combined their surnames to become Haldeman-Julius. Together, they collaborated on numerous literary works, including the 1921 novel Dust. Marcet also reported on conditions in the Soviet Union for The American Freeman during 1931-1932 and co-wrote articles with John W. Gunn from the Haldeman-Julius press throughout the 1930s. She served as a delegate at the Socialist Party of America’s National Convention in 1932; that same year, Emanuel campaigned for the U.S. Senate as a Socialist candidate.
The couple had two biological children and adopted a third. Although they legally separated in 1933, they continued living together while Marcet spent considerable time at her family’s farm in Cedarville, Illinois.
Marcet passed away from cancer in Girard in 1941 and was laid to rest in Cedarville. Her personal papers are preserved across several institutions including Kansas State University Libraries, Bryn Mawr College, Pittsburg State University, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Indiana University.
See .
Selected works
- The People's Bank and the Bank's People, 1916.
- Sketches (co-authored with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), 1917.
- "Dreams and Compound Interest" (with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), 1919.
- "Caught" (with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), 1919.
- "The Unworthy Coopers" (with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), 1921.
- Dust (co-written with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), 1921.
- What Great Men Have Said About Women, 1922.
- Embers: A Play in One Act (with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), circa 1923.
- "Impressions of the Scopes Trial", 1925.
- "An Interview with Harry Houdini", 1925.
- Clarence Darrow's Defense of a Negro, 1926.
- Clarence Darrow's Two Great Trials: Reports of the Scopes Anti-Evolution Case and the Dr. Sweet Negro Trial, 1927.
- The Story of a Lynching: An Exploration of Southern Psychology, 1927.
- Why I Believe in Companionate Marriage, circa 1927.
- "What the Negro Students Endure in Kansas", 1928.
- Violence (with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), 1929.
- Great Court Trials of History, circa 1930s.
- Spurts from an Interrupted Pen, circa 1931.
- Talks with Joseph McCabe, and Other Confidential Sketches, circa 1931.
- Jane Addams As I Knew Her, 1936.
- Famous and Interesting Guests at a Kansas Farm: Impressions of Upton Sinclair, Lawrence Tibbett, Mrs. Martin Johnson, Clarence Darrow, Will Durant, E.W. Howe, Alfred Kreymborg and Anna Louise Strong, 1936.
- Three Generations of Changing Morals, circa 1936.
- A Popular History of the United States, circa 1937.
- The King and Mrs. Simpson, circa 1937.
- Assassinations of American Presidents, With Two Attempted Assassinations, 1938.
- Five Short Stories, reprinted 1982.
- Short Works (with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius), reprinted 1992.
Bibliography
- Addams, Jane. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams (edited by Mary Lynn Bryan and Barbara Bair). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002 (vol. 1) and 2009 (vol. 2).
- Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War (edited by Katherine Joslin). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002 [originally 1922], pp. xvi-xvii, xxv-xxvi.
- Barrett-Fox, Jason. Feminism, Socialism, and Pragmatism in the Life of Marcet Haldeman-Julius, 1887-1941 (master’s thesis, University of Kansas, 2008; accessible online at KU here).
- Barrett-Fox, Jason. “A Rhetorical Recovery: Self-Avowal and Self-Displacement in the Life, Fiction, and Nonfiction of Marcet Haldeman-Julius, 1921-1936.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 21, no. 1 (2010), pp. 14–30 (abstract).
- Barrett-Fox, Jason. Feminisms, Publics, and Rhetorical Indirections: Figuring Marcet Haldeman-Julius, Anita Loos, and Mae West, 1905-1930 (doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 2013).
- Breaux, Richard M. "Using the Press to Fight Jim Crow at Two White Midwestern Universities, 1900-1940," in The History of Discrimination in U.S. Education (edited by E.H. Tamura). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 141–164.
- Brown, Melanie Ann. Five-Cent Culture at the "University in Print": Radical Ideology and the Marketplace in E. Haldeman-Julius's Little Blue Books, 1919-1929 (doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2006; available at here).
- Burnett, Betty. "Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel." In American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 volumes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 9.
- Davis, Rebecca L. "'Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry': The Companionate Marriage Controversy." Journal of American History, vol. 94, no. 4 (March 2008), pp. 1137–1163.
- DeGruson, Eugene. "Afterword." Washburn University Center for Kansas Studies, 1992.[1]
- Gunn, John W. Marcet. Girard: Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company, 1941.
- Leavell, Linda. Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
- Moore, Marianne. Selected Letters (edited by Bonnie Costello). New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
- Wright, Holly. The Anna Marcet Haldeman-Julius Story (master’s thesis, Wichita State University, 2001).
External links
- ↑ DeGruson Archived 2010-06-10 at the Wayback Machine served as curator for the Pittsburg State Haldeman-Julius collection Archived 2015-09-01 at the Wayback Machine.