Clara Littledale
Clara Savage Littledale | |
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| Born | January 31, 1891 Good Housekeeping Magazine and Parents Magazine .
Early lifeClara Littledale was born Clara Savage on January 31, 1891 CareerClara Littledale attended New York Times, before graduating in 1913.[2] Shortly after graduating, Clara tried her hand at a career in teaching, but was encouraged by a school principal who insisted that she wanted to be a writer and facilitated her career change.[2]
She was shortly hired by the New York Evening Post as their first ever woman reporter, and worked to report on suffrage conventions and parades.[3] Not long after being hired, she was promoted to the position of editor of the woman's page.[2] She stayed at the New York Evening Post for only one year.
In 1914, Littledale accepted the position of press chairman for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).[1] While in that position, Littledale frequently attended and observed suffrage meetings and marched in parades; later in life she would express regret for carrying a banner that read: "If Idiots and Morons Can Vote, Why Can't I?"[2] By 1915, Littledale's time as press chairman for NAWSA had proved her distaste for publicity work[2] and she left the position to accept a new job as associate editor for Good Housekeeping, where she reported on politics in Washington, D.C., from a woman's perspective.[2] When World War I began, Littledale was posted to France as a reporter for Good Housekeeping, where she reported on the war from a woman's perspective.[3] After six months, her superiors at Good Housekeeping ordered her to return home, to which she famously responded with a telegram that read "Resigning and Remaining."[4] Clara Littledale returned to the United States in 1920, at which time she married her former coworker at the Evening Post Harold Aylmer Littledale, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who would eventually go on to become the editor of the New York Times.[2] Rosemary Littledale, their daughter, was born in 1922.[1] Clara Littledale continued to write free-lance stories centered themes of marriage and family life, and they were published in journals such as Good Housekeeping, The New Republic, and McCall's.[2]
Parent Teacher Associations, and child study groups, and publishing book-length advice manuals.[2] In her position as editor of Parents Magazine, Littledale also spoke often on the radio and became a familiar voice there, and as such broadened her audience significantly.[4]
During Adult Education, the National Commission for Mental Hygiene and the National Council of Parent Education.[1]
Plane crashIn February 1941, Clara and Harold Littledale boarded an Atlanta, Georgia, shortly after midnight on February 27.[6] In the days after the crash, Clara Littledale dictated a report of the crash for Parents Magazine, in which she recounted her realization that the plane was crashing, being pinned under three pine trees, and the several uninjured passengers who left to form a rescue party, which returned at 6 A.M. the following morning.[6] Clara Littledale was relatively unscathed, but her husband Harold was permanently paralyzed.[2] Their already strained marriage became untenable as a result, and they divorced in 1945.[2]
Death and legacyIn 1947, Clara Littledale was diagnosed with cancer, but she continued to work for Parents Magazine through a series of operations and chronic pain.[2] She participated in many events and engagements despite her diagnosis, including attending the White House Conference on Family Life in 1948, speaking at the Mental Hygiene Society Child Welfare Conference in 1949, taking a transcontinental tour in 1950, and traveling to Hawaii as a guest of the United States Navy in 1953.[1] Clara Littledale died in 1956 in New York City[1] having never retired.[2] Her papers are held by Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. References
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