Elsie Robinson
Listen, World!
I declared my intention to be a writer in the late 1970s and worked toward that goal through graduate school while working full-time and raising two little girls. In 1990, I published my first human interest column in the Madisonville Messenger. When I moved to Danville in 1991, I started writing a weekly column for the Commercial News and continued for twelve years.
The editor liked my column well enough to move it from Wednesday to Sunday, and one of my most treasured possessions is a box of letters from "fans" written to me, responding to a column that had meant something to them. I had a few hundred readers, and I was happy with that but still hoping in the secret place of my heart that someone somewhere would read me and syndicate my work.
But syndication or skyrocketing success never happened for me.
So you can imagine my interest when I came across Listen, World: How The Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America's Most-Read Woman. This biography by Alison Gilbert and Julia Scheeres tells the story of a woman who - through sheer grit - became a columnist, illustrator, poet, and author. At the height of her career, she had 20 MILLION readers every day! Think about that. Twenty million readers is double the number of subscribers to the New York Times today!
Wow! I had to know more.
I'd never heard of Elsie Robinson!
Biographies are not my thing. I sometimes find them dry and boring, so I usually opt to learn about people via historical fiction. But I'm glad I took a chance on Listen World. As a writer, I was motivated by Robinson's persistent, prolific, production of material. As a mother, I was appreciative of her devotion to her child, doing whatever it took to provide for her son. As a woman, I was inspired by her ability to defy traditional roles and choose the way she wanted to live.
The Story
Elsie Robinson was born in California in 1883, the third child of five. She was an avid reader from childhood. Her parents had sent the two older children to college, but by the time Elsie was ready to enroll, they had fallen on hard times. Elsie's only option was to marry. When a wealthy man, Christie Crowell, came to California to overcome the grief of losing his wife, he was attracted to Elsie's spirit and vivacity and asks her to marry him.
When Crowell goes back to his home state of Vermont to tell his aristocratic parents of his betrothal, they object. After all, she's a wild, low-class Western girl. They agree to the marriage only if she spends a year learning the domestic arts and getting "polished" at a female Christian academy.
Even though Elsie does what's expected of her, the Crowells never accept her. Once married, her husband is cold and aloof. No matter what Elsie does, nothing is ever good enough. The only good thing to come out of the marriage is her son, George, who is weak and asthmatic. To keep him entertained, Elsie writes and illustrates stories for him.
That, my friends, is the beginning of a journalistic career that far exceeds anything a woman had ever done before.
Why the word "Intrepid" is in the title
The meaning of intrepid is bold, brave, fearless, or adventurous. Elsie Robinson was all of those.
She moved across the country to be married to a man whose family she had never met. She spent a year in "finishing" school to please his affluent family and "fit in." Trying to fit into a regimented New England society, Elsie undertook domesticity with fierceness and determination.
When that doesn't work out, she makes bold, non-conformist choices. Under the guise of a vacation to a climate that would benefit her severely asthmatic son, Elsie travels back to California with a man who had been previously hospitalized for a mental breakdown. Once there, she delays her return to Vermont. When her husband cuts off the tiny bit of money he was sending, she looked for any job she could get. Too old for "clerk" jobs, Elsie took the only work she could find as a miner working in a mine 600 feet underground, a singular woman on a male crew. Gritty and gutsy, to be sure.
"More to the story..."
Every night, after a grueling workday, Elsie would take care of her son, chop wood, cook dinner, read him stories, and after he was in bed, she would sit up until the wee hours of the morning, writing stories and drawing sketching illustrations.
During her time in the tiny town of Hornitos, California, in 1917, she found her first friend, Luola Rodgers. Luola was the adult daughter of Moses Rodgers, a former slave and now successful mining boss. Her intense relationship with Luola was a positive influence on Elsie. When Luola gifted Elsie with an old typewriter, Elsie's career was bolstered because stories had to be typed to be submitted to newspapers and magazines.
When the mine goes belly-up, Elsie moves to the Bay area of California and walks the streets looking for work. This is a sad part of the story, but Elsie decides that the one thing she knows how to do is write. She takes some of her stories and pictures to the Oakland Tribune. An editor hired her on the spot to do a kid's column, with drawings. The column skyrocketed in popularity as Elsie Robinson became "Aunt Elsie." With the increase in sales, the paper gave Elsie an entire Sunday spread to fill every week.
One good thing leads to another
Aunt Elsie's popularity led to more assignments. She began a homemaking column called
"Curtains, Collars, and Cutlets" as well as columns titled "Cry on Geraldine's Shoulder," and "Tell It To Aunt Elsie."
What really took off was a column called "Listen, World!" Elsie's style was direct, unapologetic, and engaging. People loved her honesty, and women in particular were inspired by Elsie's belief that they were more than housewives. When William Randall Hearst and his publishing empire syndicated "Listen, World!" Elsie became a household name.
From a writer's perspective
I don't know how many of you have ever had to write a speech, an essay, or a story, but imagine creating NINE THOUSAND pieces for publication! The sheer volume of what Elsie Robinson achieved leaves me sweating and feeling crushed to death. She wrote thousands of words six days a week, for FORTY years, typing out her text on an old manual typewriter. Her entire life was focused on just two things: supporting her son and cultivating her audience.
Elsie Robinson kept a grueling, nearly impossible output of columns, stories, AND illustrations.
When writers today bemoan the difficulty of their work, (most who are doing it with computers, lights, and modern conveniences,) they should think of Elsie Robinson, crafting columns in a poor cabin in the foothills of California, typing by kerosine lamp, and sleeping just a couple of hours before she went to work in the mines!
How many writers today can say they have pursued their passion so zealously, working that hard and that consistently for four full decades?
Not many!
A picture's worth a thousand words
One of the most notable facts about Elsie Robinson is that she was then, and still is, one of the only journalists to both write AND illustrate her stories. In the 1910s, the field of illustration was decidedly male.
Elsie became the highest-paid woman writer in the Hearst organization as well as the most-read woman in America.
One could argue that Elsie was a forerunner of the feminist movement although Elsie hated the term feminist. However, through her lifetime, she consistently wrote about the gender-induced constraints of women, their role in marriage, and the impact of sexism on the world. She made her points with memorable cartoons that doubled the meaning with a visual punch.
Grief, hardships, and poetic responses
Allison Gilbert, one of the authors, started to do this research when she found an old poem typed out on onionskin paper and tucked into one of her mother's books. The poem was on grieving, and Allison had never heard of Elsie Robinson before finding this ephemera.
Elsie Robinson wasn't just an advocate for children and women. She was an observer and chronicler of life around her. In honest, conversational tone, she tackled big issues like gender inequality, racism, and prejudice. She fought back against the hatred of Jews before and during WWII.
Her personal life is not a model of success, but she helped millions of people with her poetry on grief that came from her own losses.
Eventually, Elsie wrote her memoir, "I Wanted Out" which was serialized by Cosmopolitan, and again touched women who didn't find comfort in the traditional roles laid out for them.
The lack of women's history
One of the questions asked in this book is how could we have forgotten Elsie Robinson? Why is it that this massive force in progressive thinking is unknown to us now?
"That we suffer from a shortage of women's histories is not new information. But Robinson's obscurity feels particularly surprising when you consider both her popularity and the dramatic life behind her hard-won sagacity.... Scheeres and Gilbert attempt to resurrect Elsie, fill in her biography and place her in the pantheon of women we should know about. The result is an engaging tale that doesn't gloss over the extreme adversity and restrictions Robinson faced as a woman of much ambition and few means."--New York Times
"An engaging tale... One does not tire of spending time with Elsie Robinson, nor stop wondering how many other women, with equally compelling tales, have also been lost to history."
Other reviews
"Page-turning detail... This engaging and well-researched biography reads like a novel and should appeal to readers interested in journalism, women's studies, and adventure tales alike."--Library Journal
"Listen, World! is the rarest of things -- a lively piece of unknown history, a marvelous story of a woman's triumph, and a tremendous read. Scheeres and Gilbert have managed the trifecta, and we readers are the better for it." --Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book
Read Listen, World!
If you're a writer or a wanna be writer... If you're interested in women's history...
If you're curious about early journalism...
If you want a good biography...
Read Listen, World!
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