Josephine Herbst (March 5, 1892 – January 28, 1969) was an American

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

, active from 1923 to near the time of her death. She was a radical with communist leanings, who "incorporate the philosophy of socialism into her fiction" and "aligned herself with the political Left". She wrote "proletarian novels" conceived along the party line, "in Marxist terms" and described as a "subtle blend of art and propaganda."

Biography

Herbst was born in

Sioux City, Iowa Sioux City () is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 85,797 in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Iowa. The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County ...

. She finished high school in 1910, attended

Morningside College Morningside University is a private university affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Sioux City, Iowa. Founded in 1894 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, Morningside University has 21 buildings on a campus in Sioux City (ar ...

(1910–12), the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 col ...

(1912–13), the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

(1916) and the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

, where she got her bachelor's degree in 1918. She then moved to New York where she affiliated herself with the people involved with '' The Writer'' and '' The Liberator''. Friends were

Genevieve Taggard Genevieve Taggard (November 28, 1894 – November 8, 1948) was an American poet. Biography Genevieve Taggard was born in Waitsburg, Washington, to James Taggard and Alta Arnold, both of whom were school teachers. Her parents were both active mem ...

Max Eastman Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical ...

and Albert Rhys Williams. The journalist and poet

Maxwell Anderson James Maxwell Anderson (December 15, 1888 – February 28, 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist. Background Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to ...

, who was married, became her lover. Herbst published her first

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

Carlotta Geet in ''

American Mercury ''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured wri ...

'' and ''

Smart Set ''The Smart Set'' was an American literary magazine, founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann and published from March 1900 to June 1930. Its headquarters was in New York City. During its Jazz Age heyday under the editorship of H. L. Mencken an ...

'', then edited by H.L. Mencken, for whom she had worked as a publicity writer and editorial reader. She went to Europe in 1922. In

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

she began to write her first, unpublished, novel ''Following the Circle'', an account of her affair with Anderson and her own abortion, as well as her sister's fatal abortion. In Paris in 1924 she fell in love with writer

John Herrmann John Theodore Herrmann (November 9, 1900 – April 9, 1959) was a writer in the 1920s and 1930s and is alleged to have introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss. Biography Herrmann was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris i ...

, nine years her junior. The couple left Europe at the end of the year and lived in a New Preston, Connecticut farmhouse the next year. They were married in 1926. The Herrmanns bought a farm house in Erwinna, Pennsylvania, in 1928, that remained Herbst's home until she died. The couple separated in 1934, and divorced in 1940. By the 1920s Herbst had made friends with

Nathan Asch Nathan or Natan may refer to: People *Nathan (given name), including a list of people and characters with this name *Nathan (surname) *Nathan (prophet), a person in the Hebrew Bible * Nathan (son of David), biblical figure, son of King David an ...

Robert McAlmon Robert Menzies McAlmon (also used Robert M. McAlmon, as his signature name, March 9, 1895 – February 2, 1956) was an American writer, poet, and publisher. In the 1920s, he founded in Paris the publishing house, Contact Editions, where he publ ...

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

and

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

Katherine Anne Porter Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was an American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel '' Ship of Fools'' was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her sh ...

and

John Dos Passos John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his ''U.S.A.'' trilogy. Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visit ...

. In addition to her novels, in the 1930s she published in several newspapers and magazines, including ''

New Masses ''New Masses'' (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA. It succeeded both ''The Masses'' (1912–1917) and ''The Liberator''. ''New Masses'' was later merged into '' Masses & Mainstream'' (19 ...

'', then edited by

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938) ...

. In 1936 she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1937 she toured the fronts of the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

, as a guest of Stalinist supporters of the

Second Spanish Republic The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII, and was dissolved on 1 ...

. After

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...

, Herbst got a job as a propaganda writer for foreign broadcast in the

Office of the Coordinator of Information The Office of the Coordinator of Information was an intelligence and propaganda agency of the United States Government, founded on July 11, 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, prior to U.S. involvement in the Second World War. It was intend ...

(progenitor of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

), but was fired a few months later in 1942 after background investigation by the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

found that she wrote that she voted Communist, that she lobbied the

U.S. Ambassador to France The United States ambassador to France is the official representative of the president of the United States to the president of France. The United States has maintained diplomatic relations with France since the American Revolution. Relations we ...

to get Communist aliens into the U.S., and that she was a "great admirer" of

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

, and considered Communist Party boss Earl Browder too "timid." During the Alger Hiss-

battle, Herbst told the FBI that in the apartment she and Herrmann shared for three months in 1934, she had seen documents taken from government offices by members of the

Ware group The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augu ...

for transmission to New York. She told Hiss's lawyers that Chambers and Herrmann discussed recruiting Hiss to help them acquire such documents, and that they and

Harold Ware Harold or "Hal" Ware (August 19, 1889 – August 14, 1935) was an American Marxist, regarded as one of the Communist Party's top experts on agriculture. He was employed by a federal New Deal agency in the 1930s. He is alleged to have been a S ...

all told her in mid-1934 that they were already in touch with Hiss, trying to recruit him for espionage more than six months before Hiss claimed to have met Chambers. In her letters and papers Herbst revealed that she knew Chambers as "an underground agent of the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

known as 'Carl,' responsible for transmission of documents from a sympathetic cell of government employees in Washington, D.C., to Communist authorities in New York,". Ruth Herrmann, widow of Herbst's ex-husband,

, told Langer that her late husband was "the man who introduced Chambers to Alger Hiss."Elinor Langer, ''Josephine Herbst: The Story She Could Never Tell'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984) , p. 297

Selected works

* ''Nothing is Sacred'', 1928 * ''Money for Love'', 1929 * ''Trexler trilogy'': ** '' Pity Is Not Enough'', 1933 ** ''The Executioner Waits'', 1934 ** ''Rope of Gold'', 1939 * ''Behind the Swastika'', 1936 * ''Satan's Sergeants'', 1941 * ''Somewhere the Tempest Fell'', 1947 * ''New Green World'', 1954 * ''The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs'', 1991

References

External links

Josephine Herbst at The Literary Encyclopedia
* Josephine Herbst Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Herbst, Josephine 1892 births 1969 deaths 20th-century American women writers American lesbian writers Writers from Iowa Morningside University alumni University of Iowa alumni University of Washington alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Proletarian literature People from Bucks County, Pennsylvania 20th-century LGBT people

Biography

Selected works

References

Further reading

External links