Harriet Woodbridge Gilfillan was a proletarian writer from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who as Lauren Gilfillan wrote "I went to pit college," a novel based on her experiences living in Pennsylvania mining town.
From the description of Lauren Gilfillan papers, 1921-1999, bulk 1921-1938. (University of Michigan). WorldCat record id: 244825848
Lauren Gilfillan was the pseudonym of Harriet Woodbridge Gilfillan. She was born in 1909 in Washington DC, but eventually came to live in Kalamazoo where she graduated from high school. She graduated from Smith College in 1931 and moved to New York to seek a job in the publishing industry. One publisher encouraged her to write a first-hand account of the plight of miners in Pennsylvania. The result of her experiences was the book, published in 1934, I Went to Pit College . Soon after completing her work on this project, Gilfillan would suffer from what would later be diagnosed as schizophrenia. She moved back to Kalamazoo but would eventually be hospitalized for an extended period of time at the University of Michigan Hospital and Kalamazoo State Hospital. She died in 1978.
From the guide to the Lauren Gilfillan papers, 1921-1999, 1921-1938, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)
