Helen Rose Hull

Helen Rose Hall was born in 1888 in Michigan.[1] She is remembered as both a teacher and a writer. Beginning her teaching career at Wellesley College and Barnard College, she went on to teach creative writing at Columbia University for forty years with her life-long partner, Mabel Louise Robinson.[1][2]

Career

In 1914, when Hull was twenty-six years old, she began her career as a writer, which lasted for over fifty years. Her first published piece was a one-act play in the suffrage magazine, The Woman's Journal.[3] Throughout her career, Hull managed to publish seventeen novels and sixty-five short stories. Her short stories appeared in more than fourteen different American magazines, including Colliers, Century, Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, Cosmopolitan, and Ladies Home Journal. The topic of her writing included familial relationships, gender differences, and social issues, including race and women's economic status.[3] Despite being involved in radical politics early in life, Hull mainly addressed issues through the stories of her characters.[3] It is speculated that her decreased involvement in the political scene was due to her publisher's concern that Hull's lesbianism would be "detrimental to her career."[1]

Hull died in 1971 at the age of 83.[1]

Quest and Islanders

Hull's first novel, Quest, received generally positive reviews upon its publication in 1922.[3] Another one of her notable novels, Islanders, was published in 1927 and is set in the Midwest during the mid-19th century to World War I. It tells the story of a single woman who has to take care of her parents, her siblings, and her siblings' children. Through the growth of this intelligent and inventive woman, Hull poses important questions about the role of a woman during this time period.[2]

Reviews

Her fictional pieces were praised by noteworthy sources including the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and the Boston Transcript.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Lundie, Catherine A. (1996-01-01). Restless Spirits: Ghost Stories by American Women, 1872-1926. Univ of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1558490566.
  2. 1 2 "Back Matter". Women's Studies Quarterly 16 (1/2). 1988-01-01.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Miller, Patricia McClelland (1989-01-01). "The fiction of Helen Rose Hull". United States -- Connecticut: The University of Connecticut.
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