Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–1930

by Jean Marie Lutes

The first study of the role of the newspaperwoman in American literary culture at the turn of the twentieth century, this book recaptures the imaginative exchange between real-life reporters like Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells and fictional characters like Henrietta Stackpole, the lady-correspondent in Henry James's Portrait of a Lady . It chronicles the exploits of a neglected group of American women writers and uncovers an alternative reporter-novelist tradition that runs counter to the more familiar story of gritty realism generated in male-dominated newsrooms. Taking up actual newspaper accounts written by women, fictional portrayals of female journalists, and the work of reporters-turned-novelists such as Willa Cather and Djuna Barnes, Jean Marie Lutes finds in women's journalism a rich and complex source for modern American fiction. Female journalists, cast as both standard-bearers and scapegoats of an emergent mass culture, created fictions of themselves that far outlasted the fleeting news value of the stories they covered. Front-Page Girls revives the spectacular stories of now-forgotten newspaperwomen who were not afraid of becoming the news themselves―the defiant few who wrote for the city desks of mainstream newspapers and resisted the growing demand to fill women's columns with fashion news and household hints. It also examines, for the first time, how women's journalism shaped the path from news to novels for women writers.

Genres: Journalism, History, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharply written scholarly study of the "Girl Reporter" (and other women journalists) that subtly glosses the treatment of the female body and women journalists' public personae in the press during the modern period. Lutes' last chapter on how this legacy of women reporters affects modern novelists like Willa Cather and Djuna Barnes is especially powerful. Well-structured and helpful insights. Fascinating to see how Henry James revised Henrietta Stackpole in Portrait of a Lady to condemn her and her ilk.

[Amy Moritz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because, well, I'm a woman and a journalist and a bit of a history geek. I loved reading about the stunt reports and the sob sisters and realizing that there are still many connections to the way in which women are expected to report (and perform their job) today. Parts of the book read a bit too academic which slowed it down but I learned that I'm part of a long tradition ... and that women writing have always been as much THE story as the actual story they're covering.

[CB Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Front Page Girls is foremost an academic text arguing the literary scholarship ought to "acknowledge women's journalism as a vital and complex force in American letters." Lutes demonstrates both how early female journalists have been erased from the narrative of American literature and what this loss obscures about our collective understanding of this literature.

In so doing she also provides thorough historical research that would be invaluable for anyone interested in turn-of- the-19th-century journalism. The end notes alone warrant five stars—paired with her trenchant insights, it's masterful.

[Mills College Library]

071.3082 L9731 2006