Dell, Floyd, 1887-1969

Editor, playwright, novelist.

Author Floyd Dell was raised in impoverished circumstances in Illinois, developing ideals under the influence of his school-teacher mother. Although a high school dropout, a combination of intelligence, talent, and will contributed to his early success writing for periodicals. His book reviews were a revelation, and led to more prestigious work. He also wrote novels and plays, and continued to contribute influential essays and opinions in Chicago and New York. A free-thinker with a Bohemian attitude, his Socialist affiliations and rejection of middle-class values impacted his private life.

American poet, novelist, playwright, newspaperman, literary editor, author of books and articles on politics, education, and social mores, and writer for the Works Progress Administration.

Born in 1887, Dell began his career as a newspaperman in Iowa and Chicago (editor and chief contributor to the Friday Literary Review). He left for a writing career in Greenwich Village of New York City, where he also became an editor for the Socialist publication, The Masses, and its successors, The Liberator and New Masses. Moving to Croton-on-Hudson in 1919, Dell completed two novels and continued to write novels, poetry, and articles on the themes of sex, love, marriage, psychoanalysis, and education. Increasingly out of the mainstream in American letters and radical politics, Dell's work had ceased selling by 1935 when he began a twelve-year career with the WPA.

Floyd Dell was a radical American writer. A high school drop-out whose family poverty led him to join the Socialist Party at age 16, he worked as a cub reporter for the Davenport Times and then for the Chicago Evening Post . Eventually he became editor of the latter's weekly "Literary Review" section, a position he used to promote the work of writers such as Frank Norris, Jack London, Charles Edward Russell, David Graham Phillips, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane. In 1914 he joined the editorial staff of the radical journal The Masses, recruiting authors such as Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg. As a result of The Masses' public opposition to World War I, the United States government brought charges under the Espionage Act; two trials failed to convict any of the staff but The Masses was forced to cease production. Most of the staff, including Dell, went on to publish The Liberator, very similar to The Masses . In addition to his editorial work, Dell wrote plays, novels, criticism, and non-fiction and published an autobiography.

Jeannette Derby was an American radical poet. She was a frequent contributor to the bohemian periodical Pagan and her collection of poetry entitled Rigadoon was published in 1933 by Moss and Kamin (New York).