Mary Louise Booth

“Do you think women fitted for journalism?  Eminently so!”

Mary Louise Booth born in April 1831 in Long Island, New York.  She attended public schools but was primarily self taught, considered very precocious and is said to have read the Bible and Plutarch at five and Racine by the age of seven. She had a particular aptitude for foreign languages. Her father, an educator, believed that teaching was the only suitable career for a young lady.  She rebelled after teaching in his school for a few years and moved to Manhattan desiring a literary career.  She was eighteen.

She supported herself making vests while studying and writing in the evenings.  Eventually she was hired by the New York Times where she wrote on education and women’s topics. She met and became friends with Susan B. Anthony and became active in the women’s rights movement, serving as secretary at the conventions in Saratoga, New York in 1855 and New York City in 1860.  During this time she also began her own historical writing.  Her History of the City of New York was the first comprehensive history of the city to be published. 

In 1856 that she began her career as a translator and translated more than forty works from French to English. During the Civil War she used her skills to promote the Union cause translating Count deGasparin’s The Uprising of a Great People: The United States in 1861. She worked twenty hours a day for a week to accomplish this task.

In 1867 Harper and Brothers began the weekly magazine Harper’s Bazaar and they hired Mary as its editor.  She held this position for twenty two years earning the then impressive salary of $4,000.  During her tenure circulation reached 80,000.  She never married although she was engaged briefly during a trip to Venice in 1887.