Martha Foley (March 21, 1897 – September 5, 1977) cofounded ''
Story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events)
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
* Story (American English), or storey (British ...
'' magazine in 1931 with her husband
Whit Burnett
Whit Burnett (August 14, 1899 – April 22, 1973) was an American writer and educator who founded and edited the literary magazine ''Story''. In the 1940s, ''Story'' was an important magazine in that it published the first or early works of many wr ...
. She achieved some celebrity by introducing notable authors through the magazine such as
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel ''The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger got his start in 1940, before serving in World War II, by publishing several short stories in '' ...
,
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thre ...
and
Richard Wright. In 1941 she became the series editor for
The Best American Short Stories The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of ''The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in con ...
series.
Childhood
Foley was born in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
, on March 21, 1897, to Walter and Margaret M. C. Foley. From 1909 to 1915, she attended
Boston Girls' Latin School, and even then aspired to be a writer. The school magazine published her first short story, "Jabberwock," when she was eleven years old.
[
Her aspirations were present even before this. When she was seven both her parents fell ill, and were unable to care for her. She dealt with this by writing a novel about a fortunate girl who got to go to boarding school. At about this time, she became an avid reader, escaping into fiction. It is surmised][ that this laid the foundation for her later literary achievements, and when she developed an acute sympathy for the ]human condition
The human condition is all of the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed fr ...
.[
After graduating from the 'Girls School' she attended ]Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...
but did not graduate.[
]
Suffragette and socialist
Foley became active in both the suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
and socialist movements. She participated in the women's suffrage demonstration that confronted President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
when he visited Boston on February 24, 1919.
Career and marriage
After leaving Boston University, Foley chose a career as journalist and foreign correspondent for a succession of newspapers. These included the ''Boston Herald
The ''Boston Herald'' is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarded eight Pulit ...
'', the ''San Francisco Record'', and the ''New York Daily News
The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ta ...
''. In 1925, she met her husband-to-be Whit Burnett
Whit Burnett (August 14, 1899 – April 22, 1973) was an American writer and educator who founded and edited the literary magazine ''Story''. In the 1940s, ''Story'' was an important magazine in that it published the first or early works of many wr ...
in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. In 1927, she joined him in Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, where she worked for the ''Paris Herald
The ''New York Herald'' was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the ''New-York Tribune'' to form the ''New York Herald Tribune''.
Hist ...
'' and wrote fiction. They were married in Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
in 1930, and their son David was born the following year (he died in 1971). In 1931, she convinced Burnett that they should launch a magazine for short stories only.[
][
][ Before getting married, she was a companion of noted former child prodigy ]William James Sidis
William James Sidis (; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills. He is notable for his 1920 book ''The Animate and the Inanimate'', in which he speculates about the origi ...
and the object of his unrequited love.
Founding of ''Story''
The objective for the new publication
To publish is to make content available to the general public.[Berne Conve ...](_blank)
was to publish short stories with merit
Merit may refer to:
Religion
* Merit (Christianity)
* Merit (Buddhism)
* Punya (Hinduism)
* Imputed righteousness in Reformed Christianity
Companies and brands
* Merit (cigarette), a brand of cigarettes made by Altria
* Merit Energy Company, ...
or quality above the commercial mainstream of American magazines. Believing readers and writers were capable of more created this focus. In a short time their magazine ''Story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events)
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
* Story (American English), or storey (British ...
'' became notable. From the first printing, in 1931, of only 167 mimeographed copies comprising the first edition
The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed from substantially the same setting of type, including all minor typographical variants.
First edition
According to the definition of ''edition'' above, a b ...
, the magazine was gaining notice. In 1932, after only one year, they and the magazine had moved to New York City and were underwritten
Underwriting (UW) services are provided by some large financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies and investment houses, whereby they guarantee payment in case of damage or financial loss and accept the financial risk for liabilit ...
by Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
. Moreover, by this time they knew a wide range of the short story writers of the day[
The ]financial backing
An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...
of Random House created conditions where subscription
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...
s were increased to 25,000, a literary service was offered to readers, and promising new authors were continually introduced. ''Story'' is credited with the first publication and early support of a pantheon of notable authors, including: John Cheever
John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; ...
, Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, ''The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'' (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits ...
, William Saroyan
William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''The ...
, Truman Capote
Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, ...
, Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...
, and the three authors mentioned in the introduction, among others.[Burnett, Whit (1899–1973)." ]Encyclopedia Americana
''Encyclopedia Americana'' is a general encyclopedia written in American English. It was the first major multivolume encyclopedia that was published in the United States. With ''Collier's Encyclopedia'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclo ...
. Grolier Online http://ea.grolier.com/article?id=0067520-00 (accessed April 10, 2010)
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foley, Martha
1897 births
1977 deaths
American magazine editors
American women non-fiction writers
Women magazine editors
20th-century American women
American suffragists
American magazine founders