Talking About Women’s History with Debby Applegate
Debby Applegate is a historian and obsessive reader whose first book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2007 and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, NPR’s Fresh Air, the Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and American Heritage Magazine.
The Most Famous Man in America was an unconventional portrait of an unconventional minister and antislavery activist whose celebrity rivalled Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln. With her second book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, she plunged from the world of virtue to the underbelly of vice. It took thirteen years of immersion in the archives to research and write and – to give fair warning to all readers — is much racier than the first.
I’m thrilled to have Debby here on the Margins to answer questions about writing, biography, and Polly Adler.
Take it away, Debby!
What path led you to Polly Adler? And why do you think it is important to tell her story today?
I discovered Polly Adler by accident when I was strolling through the stacks of the Yale library. I was looking at books on the 1920s when this slim red volume caught my eye. This was A House is Not a Home, Polly’s best-selling 1953 memoir of her career as Jazz Age Manhattan’s most infamous and influential madam. I’d never heard of her before but I was captivated by her autobiography, whitewashed though it obviously was.
I’d always enjoyed reading about the Lost Generation, the Algonquin Roundtable, and the explosion of American culture between the World Wars – but Polly presented these familiar stories from a radically different perspective. I think of Madam as telling the secret, hidden history of those formative years, revealing how much the glamorous parties and fabulous creativity of the era were intertwined with corruption, hypocrisy, and our darkest moral impulses.
But I didn’t know when I began, how much Polly’s clear-eyed perspective and hard-boiled career would speak to the cultural zeitgeist of 2022. Her story seems especially suited to a moment when we are increasingly interested in exposing the intersections of sex and power and dismantling the conspiracies of silence that protect powerful people from bearing the full cost of their desires.
It’s an enormous jump from the subject of your first biography, famous preacher and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, to infamous madam Polly Adler. Are there common threads in their stories that called to you?
If I’d known just how enormous a jump it would be, I’m sure I’d never have dared to take the leap! It was no small thing to move from would-be saints to unrepentant sinners, from the nineteenth century to the twentieth.
Despite their many differences, however, Polly and Henry share the kind of personality that I like in everyone: open-minded, open-hearted, intellectually curious, clear-eyed but not cynical, ambitious but generous, a wonderful sense of humor about themselves and life in general. Just as important, they were great cultural connectors, who seemed to pop up in all the hotspots of their time and to know everyone who was anyone. So, I could use their lives as a way to tell a bigger story about America.
Writing about a historical figure like Polly Adler requires living with her over a period of years. What was it like to have her as your constant companion?
I really enjoyed her company, just like Henry Ward Beecher. There were many parts of her story that were dismaying, even disgusting – as the “Queen of the Underworld” she knew more than her share of sociopaths and hypocrites. Writing this book did not improve my opinion of human nature. But Polly herself was always a pleasure to be around. There was never a dull moment!
You’ve successfully made the jump that many academics dream of, from writing purely academic work to popular narrative non-fiction based on rock-solid scholarship. Do you have any advice for readers who dream of doing the same?
My transition from academic writing to popular non-fiction was very rocky at the beginning. I had no idea what I was doing and no idea how much I didn’t know. In fact, the contract for my first book was terminated when I turned in the initial disastrous chapters. But I had to repay the advance, which meant reselling the book. So I set myself on a self-study course to learn how to write for a general audience. I read books about how to write thrillers and mysteries, and even a very useful essay about to write pornography.
My biggest insight was that creating suspense is the key to persuading regular readers to turn the page. Readers have to wonder “what happens next?” or “why did that just happen?” I used the practical exercises from these how-to books all the time and I still do when I’m stuck. I am also a big believer in what I call “reverse outlining”. I take chapters from books or essays I admire and outline them paragraph by paragraph – not the content, but the action of the paragraphs (i.e. paragraph 1 introduces the main character; paragraph 2 describes their backstory; paragraph 3 introduces their desire or goal; paragraph 4 introduces a conflict or thwarting of that goal, etc.). This makes it easier to see the structure or scaffolding that creates the effect I admire.
However, it is trite but true: the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Many times I’ve wished that I could just lay out my findings for fellow scholars, without having to kowtow to regular readers who aren’t as fascinated by every tiny detail or complex historical argument the way I am.
Your books are praised for reading like novels. Do you consciously use novelist’s tools in writing narrative history?
Indeed, I do. What I like about a good history book, or any kind of book, is the feeling of immersion in that imaginative world. What does is it like to swim in another atmosphere, steeped in foreign ways of thinking? So, whenever possible I try to convey the action through actual or implied points of view, constructing a scene as it would be experienced through an individual’s sensibility rather than by an omniscient narrator. I try to let the characters make the interpretive points, rather than me, and let the characters, in effect, argue among themselves as to whose interpretation the reader should believe. Pungent quotes help with that. But I’m also fond of the novelistic technique of “free indirect discourse” where you as narrator subtly employ the language of the characters and their milieu as your own, as a way to move in and out of various positions.
Frankly, I’ll use any means to make a scene come alive in a reader’s head, as long as there is a factual foundation for it. Sometimes that requires a little sleight of hand – and the judicious use of the passive voice and implication over declaration — but I am scrupulous about making certain that what I’ve written is true to the best of my knowledge. That’s the historian’s chosen game, after all.
One of the questions I’m fascinated with right now is how biographers name their subjects, particularly when writing about a woman. Did you chose to use Polly, Adler, or something else in your book and why?
With my first book, about the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, I had to use the name “Henry” to distinguish him from all the other “Beechers” in the main cast of characters. But really that was just my excuse. I spend so much intimate time with my characters that I am always inclined to call them by their first names. Any reader who is going plow through a long biography wants to feel that sort of intimacy with the subject, I think. However, I am very careful to make sure that I dole out first names on an equal basis, so that even the highest and mightiest of men are treated as domestic creatures.
There is meaning in the way a person’s name can evolve over the course of a lifetime – from childhood endearments to nicknames to official titles — and you miss all those nuances when you depend only on a last name.
What work of women’s history have you read lately that you loved? (Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format? )
I recently re-read Zelda, Nancy Milford’s 1970 biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, a book that had a huge impact on my thinking when I was a freshman in high school. It was only on rereading it now, as a historian and a grown-up, that I realized how revolutionary it was in 1970 to write a fully fleshed biography of a woman, especially one who’d been written off as merely “the wife of an important artist.” It’s a great feminist book, yet it reads like a heartbreaking novel.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
I loved researching women of the underworld and the demimonde because they are so unconventional in the evidence they leave behind. Women who aren’t terrified about compromising their “respectable” status are much candid and surprising in what they reveal. They boldly defy the historical stereotypes that lodge in our heads, even when we know better. Also, counterintuitively, wayward women (as they used to be called) often leave behind more traces than the average, respectable woman who keeps her nose clean and her private life private. Their tangles with law enforcers, moral reformers, and muckraking reporters leave a surprisingly rich record. The down side is that they don’t leave a lot of diaries and letters. (Then again, who writes diaries and letters anymore?)
Do you think Women’s History Month is important and why?
Absolutely! Annual celebrations like Women’s History Month are not just about consciousness-raising or turning on a spotlight — although that is no small thing. They function a little like regular rituals or religious holidays, connecting us to our values and our past, all those things that are so often forgotten in the hubbub of daily life.
What are you working on now?
Absolutely nothing! I do feel a little guilty about that. If someone asks me to write something or contribute my modest might, I’ll happily say yes. But after spending thirteen years on Polly Adler, the idea of initiating a new project to take over my life…well, I’d have to be crazy to do that again, wouldn’t I?
Want to know more about Debby Applegate and her work?
Check out her website: https://debby-applegate.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @Debby_Applegate
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Come back tomorrow for a post on “lady coders’ from regular History in the Margins reader and occasional guest poster, Jack French.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Marcia Biederman
Marcia Biederman has contributed more than 150 articles to the New York Times, writing about everything from ice dancing to automobile wheel repair. Her work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Observer, the Daily News, and Crain’s New York Business. A former mystery novelist, she’s the author of three biographies, Popovers and Candlelight: Patricia Murphy and The Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire (SUNY Press 2018), Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World That Speed Reading Worked, (Chicago Review Press 2019), and A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health (Prometheus Books 2021).
Take it away, Marcia!
You write about women who were well known during their lifetimes (which were not that long ago), who had an impact on their world, and who are not well known today. Why do you think we forget the roles women have played in history so quickly?
As twentieth-century women, my biographical subjects had to buck prejudice about women’s roles to grab the public’s attention and approval, even temporarily. The two who were entrepreneurs, restaurateur Patricia Murphy and speed-reading marketer Evelyn Wood, had to market their brands relentlessly to gain recognition. Murphy drew record-breaking crowds to her enormous restaurants in New York State and southern Florida; Wood enrolled hundreds of thousands in her courses. However, their fame ended with the conclusion of the ad campaigns. Murphy’s restaurants never entered the annals of food history, the way the Four Seasons did. Wood’s brand lived on after her death, but many people thought of her as a fictitious figure, like Betty Crocker.
Both were in fields deemed appropriate for females – cooking and teaching – although Murphy couldn’t boil water, and Wood had spent little time in a classroom. But, if being women enhanced their brands in their lifetimes, it worked against them later on. Food critics and newspaper feature writers belittled Patricia Murphy’s Candlelight restaurant chain because its patrons were mostly female. In fact, late in her career, Murphy opened a men-only dining room in Florida to try to scrub off the “tearoom” taint. As for Evelyn Wood, until debunkers exposed her speed-reading method as a shame, she was one of the century’s great con artists. But no one recognized her as such. As we see today in the cases of Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey, people are reluctant to believe that women can be scammers..
Erasure was completely different for my most recent biographical figure, Dr. Elizabeth Hayes, who in 1945 led 350 coal miners on a successful strike for clean water and decent housing in their company-owned town. In the final weeks of World War II, Hayes and the strikers dominated headlines. Every news outlet in the country, from the Socialist Call to Business Week, was rooting for “Dr. Betty’s miners,” as they were known. The “we-can-do-it” spirit of the times briefly blurred gender roles. Thirty-three years old, Hayes made a great 1940s heroine, taking on a powerful mining company with bold leadership and quotable quips.
But, unlike the women of my other two biographies, Hayes had never sought the spotlight, and she didn’t spend money on ads and publicists to keep herself visible. Hence, it was a fairly easy task for history to erase her. Her struggle inspired President Harry S. Truman to commission a medical survey of coal communities, but the admiral leading it didn’t acknowledge Hayes or invite her participation. For a while, she gave talks about the strike, eventually disappearing into private life. Like a meteor streaking across the sky, she had a brief moment of fame, which I had the privilege to discover and, I hope, revive.
You published mystery novels before you made the leap to writing non-fiction. Does your experience as a novelist shape how you write narrative non-fiction?
Yes, I’m definitely able to apply the techniques of mystery writing to my narrative nonfiction. I can’t make anything up, but I can find the drama in real-life events.
When I was having trouble with an early draft of one of my books, I scheduled a mentoring session with Cathy Curtis, a past president of Biographers International Organization who has written several amazing biographies of women. She advised me to look for a “Rosebud moment.” I immediately knew what she meant. Looking at the life I was chronicling, what was the person’s driving motivation? I also look for antagonists, reactions to setbacks, and big life-changing decisions.
There are some differences, though. Because the women I write are unknown to many readers, I begin with a prologue that establishes their importance. For Patricia Murphy, this was the launch of her memoir at Macy’s, where she set a record for the number of books signed. For Evelyn Wood, it’s at a teacher’s convention in Atlantic City, where teenagers demonstrating her speed-reading techniques wowed the crowds and sent reporters racing to their typewriters. For Dr. Elizabeth Hayes, it was the raiding of her medical office by enraged mining officials who forcibly evicted her, confiscating her stethoscope, patient records, and medications.
What was the most surprising thing you’ve found doing historical research for your work
Like many Baby Boomers, I grew up thinking that all Americans pulled together on the US homefront throughout World War II. Sure, I knew about the black marketeers and other profiteers, but I thought the nation on the whole devoted itself to the war effort until V-J Day. Researching A Mighty Force, I discovered that a phenomenon called “peace jitters” was widespread. Toward the end of the war, Americans felt confident that the Allies would win, so they started jockeying for position in postwar prosperity. They quit defense jobs to seek positions in sales, for instance. Meanwhile, corporations were prematurely planning to ditch weapon-making so they could manufacture appliances instead. Alarmed, the federal government tried to enforce wartime restrictions, but there were ways around them. In other words, the Mad Men-style rat race started earlier than I thought.
Question for Pamela: If you had to recommend one biography of a woman to other biographers or aspiring biographers (not necessarily to all bio readers) what would it be and why?
You asked for one. I’m going to give you three because I think they offer different lessons. (They are all also compulsively readable.)
Nancy Marie Brown. The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women. This was one of the best books I read in 2021, and I’m recommending it to lots of people for lots of different reasons. Brown builds a possible life story for the Birka Woman—the Viking warrior remains that Swedish scholars proved were those of a woman, not a man as had been assumed for more than 130 years. The Real Valkyrie offers biographers is an object lesson in re-examining assumptions, using your imagination in looking for sources, and squeezing every drop of information out of the sources you have.
Helen Castor. Joan of Arc. Castor provides an excellent example of how to bring new life to a familiar subject, signaled in the use of “a history” rather than “a biography” as a sub-title. Instead of starting with Joan, she begins with the turbulent history of fifteenth century France, placing Joan’s achievements within the context of the bloody civil war that began with the assassination of Louis, Duke of Orleans, at the instigation of his brother, the Duke of Burgundy, in 1407. In doing so, she makes story of St. Joan more understandable, more complex, and more extraordinary.
Matthew Goodman. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History Making Race Around the World. Eighty Days is more than an adventure story, though Goodman manages the difficult trick of maintaining suspense when the reader knows who wins the race. The lesson for biographers, though, is the way Goodman places his story in context. He does not limit himself to a step-by-step narrative of his heroines’ travels. Instead he uses the race to illustrate the social impact of new modes of transportation, a growing popular press, and new opportunities for women. The result is a social history of America on the verge of modernity. Personally, I believe this rich use of historical context is something every biographer should aspire to.
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Want to know more about Marcia Biederman and her work?
Check out her website: Marciabiederman.com
Follow her on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AMightyForce
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Come back tomorrow for a whole bunch of questions with biographer Debby Applegate.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Fredara Hadley
Fredara Mareva Hadley, Ph.D. is an ethnomusicology professor in the Music History Department at The Juilliard School where she teaches courses on ethnomusicology and African American Music. Dr. Hadley has presented her research at universities and conferences both domestic and abroad and has been published in academic journals and other publications. Her commentary is featured in several documentaries including the recently released PBS doc-series, The Black Church, hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. One of her ongoing research projects focuses on composer and musicologist, Shirley Graham DuBois. Dr. Hadley’s forthcoming book focuses on the musical impact of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Take it away, Fredara!*
What path led you to Shirley Graham Dubois? And why do you think it is important to tell her story today?
I came to Shirley Graham DuBois through the Oberlin College Archives. I was preparing a class lecture on the early Black graduates of Oberlin Conservatory for my African American Music class, so I decided to go to the archives to see what I could find to learn more about them and their contributions. There were so many interesting finds, but Shirley Graham DuBois just grabbed me. There were so many fascinating things about her. She came to Oberlin in the early 1930s as a mother and divorcee. That was virtually unheard of then. Then while at Oberlin she wrote and staged an entire opera and wrote a Masters’s Thesis entitled, “Survival of Africanisms in Modern Music.”
As it happened, I ran into my colleague, Tamika Nunley, as I was leaving the Archive that day and she too was interested in Graham DuBois. That led to us to teaching companion courses about Graham DuBois, traveling to Ghana, Graham DuBois’ adopted homeland, and hosting a symposium about her life and contributions.
Graham-DuBois is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever encountered. She was a composer, an biographer, a magazine founder, a mother, a wife, and worked in the Ghanaian government in the early years of independence. She knew Mao Zedong, was a comrade of Paul and Eslanda Robeson. Once you know Shirley Graham DuBois’ name, she appears everywhere from FBI files to newspaper articles, Maya Angelou’s biography, and so many other places. She’s one who truly lived life on her own times and consistently tried to bend the world into what she thought it should be.
I think we always need to hear from women like her. [Pamela butting in here to say “Amen!”]
Are there special challenges to researching women of color, who in some ways have been doubly erased from history?
One of the interesting things about Graham DuBois is that she was actually well known in her lifetime. So, I am fortunate that there was substantial coverage of her during her lifetime through the Black press and the mainstream press. Further, Graham DuBois was a prolific writer. So while to our knowledge, she wasn’t a diarist, we have articles, books, correspondence, that help us understand her world and humanity.
Now, it is also true that the coverage of her is likely not the same as it would have been for a man. That, combined with her staunchly communist views, means that often I still get to Graham DuBois through the stories of others, namely her husband. But thankfully, Gerald Horne, wrote a wonderful biography about her that paints the broad strokes of her life.
One of the questions I’m fascinated with right now is how biographers name their subjects, particularly when writing about a woman. Do you chose to use Shirley or DuBois (or something else) in your work and why?
I went through a few interactions of how to refer to her. In my head, I often call her “Aunt Shirley” because she feels so familiar to me. But in writing, I’ve settled on Graham DuBois. Graham is her maiden name and the name under which she did so much of her writing, but she was also proud of being W.E.B. Dubois’ wife, so referring to her as Graham DuBois feels like I’m honoring what was important to her. [Pamela again: What an elegant solution to an intractable problem! ]
*With a hat tip to writing friend Sunny Stalter-Pace,who introduced me to Fredara Hadley. That’s how the magic happens here.
Shirley Graham DuBois 1946
And here’s my question to you! What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
The most challenging thing about researching historical women is the eternal problem with sources. Even with a subject like Sigrid Schultz, where actual archival sources exist, there are always huge holes in the story—which sometimes seem to get bigger the closer you look. (Or at least that’s how it feels today.)
On the other hand, the most exciting thing is finding my way around one of those challenges.(Also how it feels today.Woot!)
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Want to know more about about Fredara Hadley and her work?
Check out her website: http://fredaramhadley.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @FredaraMareva
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with biographer Marcia Biederman