Mabel Potter Daggett

Mabel Potter Daggett (February 14, 1871 – November 13, 1927) was an American writer, journalist, editor and suffragist. Daggett reported from France during World War I, wrote a biography of Queen Marie of Romania, and was active in the woman's movement in the US.

Mabel Potter Daggett
BornFebruary 14, 1871
Syracuse, New York
DiedNovember 13, 1927
OccupationJournalist
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSyracuse University
SpouseJohn Duval Daggett

Early life and education

Mabel Potter was born in Syracuse, New York, daughter of Albert and Sarah Louise (Hobbie) Potter. She graduated from Syracuse University in 1895.[1][2]

Career

As a journalist, Mabel Potter Daggett wrote and edited for newspapers and magazines. She was an editor on Hampton's Magazine and The Delineator, a women's magazine associated with Theodore Dreiser.[3] Among her articles was a 1911 indictment of yoga, then trendy among society women, which she described as leading to lost fortunes, ruined looks, "domestic infelicity, insanity, and death",[4] and a report from Argonne Cemetery after World War I.[5][6] She was part of a wartime tour of Paris and Reims in 1916, one of six American journalists invited to witness the war's effects. "There are fields in France that are planted with black crosses, acres and acres of them," she reported in the Pictorial Review. "After each new push on the front, more are required, black crosses by the cartload!" [7]

As a writer, Daggett was the author of several books, including In Lockerbie Street (1909, an appreciation of poet James Whitcomb Riley),[8][9] Women Wanted: The Story Written in Blood Red Letters on the Horizon of the Great World War (1918, a book about women and World War I),[10] and a well-reviewed biography of Marie of Romania (1926).[11][12]

Daggett was active as a feminist and suffragist.[13] The editor of Good Housekeeping magazine declared, "The modern woman has few more determined and capable champions than Mabel Potter Daggett."[14] She was a member of Heterodoxy, a feminist club based in Greenwich Village; other Heterodites included her fellow Delineator editors Sarah Field Splint and Katherine Leckie. In 1914 she toured in Europe to report on the conditions of women's lives.[15] In 1918 and 1926 she was a speaker at the General Federation of Women's Clubs biannual convention.[16] She served on the executive committee of the National Birth Control League with fellow Heterodites Elinor Byrns and Kathleen de Vere Taylor.[17]

Personal life

Mabel Potter Daggett (1918)

Mabel Potter married John Duval Daggett in 1901.

Daggett lived at the Pen and Brush Club in New York City at the time of her death in 1927.[18]

References

  1. "Mabel P. Daggett, Author, Dies Here" New York Times (November 14, 1927): 21.
  2. John William Leonard, Woman's Who's Who of America (American Commonwealth Company 1914): 226.
  3. Jude Davies, ed., Theodore Dreiser: Political Writings (University of Illinois Press 2011): 9–10. ISBN 9780252090127
  4. Mabel Potter Daggett, "The Heathen Invasion" Hampton-Columbian Magazine 27(4)(October 1911): 399–411.
  5. "Fairfield County Men Who Gave their Lives in World War, Mentioned in War Story" Lancaster Eagle-Gazette (June 23, 1920): 2. via Newspapers.com
  6. Mabel Potter Daggett, "At the Inn of the Field of Gold" The Delineator (June 1920).
  7. Ed Klekowski, Libby Klekowski, Eyewitnesses to the Great War: American Writers, Reporters, Volunteers and Soldiers in France, 1914–1918 (McFarland 2012): 146. ISBN 9780786492008
  8. Mabel Potter Daggett, In Lockerbie Street (B. W. Dodge & Company 1909).
  9. Louise Connolly, "The Woman Who Saw it First" The Woman Citizen 3(July 20, 1918): 155.
  10. Mabel Potter Daggett, Women Wanted: The Story Written in Blood Red Letters on the Horizon of the Great World War (Hodder and Stoughton 1918).
  11. "Queen Marie in an Intimate Portrait" New York Times (December 26, 1926): BR3.
  12. Mabel Potter Daggett, Marie of Roumania: The Intimate Story of the Radiant Queen (Kessinger Publishing 2007).
  13. Mabel Potter Daggett, "Votes for College Women" The Key 28(3)(1911): 213–224.
  14. William Frederick Bigelow, "Pages in Which the Editor Says a Few Words about the Magazine" Good Housekeeping 63(October 1916): 10.
  15. "Grand Institution: Mrs. Daggett Upholds the American Man's Reputation in Europe" Kinston Free Press (July 22, 1914): 1. via Newspapers.com
  16. "Women Wanted" Fitchburg Sentinel (June 19, 1918): 7. via Newspapers.com
  17. "N. B. C. L. Begins Fifth Year" Birth Control Review 3(5)(May 1919): 4.
  18. "Mabel Potter Daggett, Writer, Dies in East" The Pantagraph (November 20, 1927): 23. via Newspapers.com
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