MILDRED ALDRICH, 1853-1928

Mildred Aldrich, journalist, author and editor, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Edwin and Lucy Ayers (Baker) Aldrich . She was raised in Boston, Massachusetts . After graduation from Everett [High] School (1872), she taught elementary school in Boston for a brief period. She began her career as a journalist with the Boston Home Journal, and later worked for the Boston Journal and the Boston Herald . In January 1892 she founded The Mahogany Tree, which she edited until December 1892, when the magazine folded. Published weekly, The Mahogany Tree contained editorials, fiction, poetry, and drama and book reviews.

In 1898 MA travelled to Paris, and subsequently settled there. While living in Paris, she became a close friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and was a member of their social circle. She worked as a foreign correspondent, translated plays from French into English, and negotiated the rights to the works of French playwrights for production in the United States. In 1914 she retired to "Hilltop" ("La Creste"), her cottage in Huiry, a village on the outskirts of Paris. While at "La Creste" she published four collections of her letters: Hilltop On the Marne (1915), On the Edge of the War Zone (1917), Peak of the Load (1918), and When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1919). She also published a novel, Told In A French Garden (1916). In her later years she was supported largely by a fund that had been established for her by Stein and Toklas in 1924. MA died at "La Creste" on February 19, 1928.