Vorse, Mary Heaton, 1874-1966

Mary Heaton Vorse; b. October 11, 1874, New York City; June 14, 1966, Provincetown, Massachusetts; American journalist and novelist. She established her reputation as a journalist reporting the labor protests of a largely female and immigrant workforce in the east-coast textile industry. Her later fiction drew on this material profiling the social and domestic struggles of working women. Unwilling to be a disinterested observer, she participated in labor and civil protests and was for a period the subject of regular U.S. Justice Department surveillance ...

Mary Heaton was born in New York City on 11th October, 1874. Her mother had inherited a large fortune from her first husband, a wealthy shipping magnate. Soon after his death she remarried Mary's father, Hiram Heaton. The family lived in a 24-room house in Amherst, Massachusetts. Mary travelled extensively and as a child she learnt to speak fluent French, Italian and German.

In 1896, Mary Heaton began to study at the Art Students' League, located on West 57th Street in New York City. It had no entrance requirements and no set course. By the time Heaton joined it had developed a reputation for progressive teaching methods and radical politics. Heaton became friendly with several students such as May Wilson Preston, Alice Beach Winter, Ida Proper and Lou Rogers who became active in the struggle for women's suffrage and other progressive causes. However, Heaton lacked artistic talent and she wrote in her diary: "When I come into my room and see my work lying around, my sense of my own futility overwhelms me. After so much work, that is all I can do." ...