Elizabeth Janeway
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth Janeway was an American
author
and critic
.
Born Elizabeth Ames Hall in Brooklyn, New York, her naval architect father and homemaker mother fell on hard times during the Depression
, leading her to end her Swarthmore College
education and help support the family by creating bargain basement sale slogans (she graduated from Barnard College
just a few years later, in 1935).
Never a supporter of the Communist Party
or even a socialist, she did breathe the progressive air of 1930s New York City
; she always laughed as she described how she and a Barnard friend met their physical education requirement by improvising a tap-dance version of The Internationale
. Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing
class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway
, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson
(he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts). Elizabeth described Eliot as "the most intelligent man I had ever met."
The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other luminaries of the day (she recommended Erica Jong
's Fear of Flying
to Justice William O. Douglas
).
At the behest of labor organizer Walter Reuther
she aided General Motors workers with their mid-1940s strike against the company.
Janeway finally finished Girls in 1943 while awaiting the birth of her second child; she signed the contract with the publishers while en route to the hospital. A later novel, 1949's The Question of Gregory, attracted attention due to the eerie similarities between Gregory and James Forrestal
, a Defense Secretary
and acquaintance of the Janeways who committed suicide
. Janeway denied any connection between fact and fiction; she said the real theme of the book was "liberals
in trouble".
All in all Janeway wrote seven novels; one, 1945's Daisy Kenyon
, was made into a film starring Joan Crawford
. For a time Janeway was a reviewer for the New York Times. In that capacity she introduced writer Anthony Powell
and served as a champion of controversial works such as Lolita
. She was also a reviewer for Ms. magazine
.
From 1965-1969 she served as president of the Authors Guild, addressing lawmakers about copyright
protection and other matters.
Many of Janeway's early works focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society. In the early 1970s, she began a more explicitly feminist path with works such as Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study of Social Mythology. She befriended Betty Friedan
, Gloria Steinem
and Kate Millett
and was strongly in favor of abortion
rights. Janeway continued to write and go on lecture tours. She learned to speak Russian
so that she could visit the Soviet Union
.
Janeway was a judge for the National Book Awards in 1955 and for the Pulitzer Prize
in 1971. She was an executive of International PEN
. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, her alma mater
Barnard College
awarded Janeway its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
Elizabeth Hall Janeway died at her Rye, New York
home. She is survived by two sons: Columbia Graduate School of Journalism professor, Boston Globe editor and former Atlantic Monthly executive Michael Janeway and William Hall Janeway, until 2006 a Vice Chairman at Warburg Pincus
, as well as by three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
.
Born Elizabeth Ames Hall in Brooklyn, New York, her naval architect father and homemaker mother fell on hard times during the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, leading her to end her Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
education and help support the family by creating bargain basement sale slogans (she graduated from Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
just a few years later, in 1935).
Never a supporter of the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
or even a socialist, she did breathe the progressive air of 1930s New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; she always laughed as she described how she and a Barnard friend met their physical education requirement by improvising a tap-dance version of The Internationale
The Internationale
The Internationale is a famous socialist, communist, social-democratic and anarchist anthem.The Internationale became the anthem of international socialism, and gained particular fame under the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1944, when it was that communist state's de facto central anthem...
. Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway
Eliot Janeway
Eliot Janeway , born Eliot Jacobstein, was an influential American economist, journalist and author whose career spanned seven decades. He was an economic advisor to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. His eclectic approach focused on the interaction between political...
, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
(he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts). Elizabeth described Eliot as "the most intelligent man I had ever met."
The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other luminaries of the day (she recommended Erica Jong
Erica Jong
Erica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
's Fear of Flying
Fear of Flying (novel)
Fear of Flying is a 1973 novel by Erica Jong, which became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality, and figured in the development of second-wave feminism....
to Justice William O. Douglas
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
).
At the behest of labor organizer Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther
Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party in the mid 20th century...
she aided General Motors workers with their mid-1940s strike against the company.
Janeway finally finished Girls in 1943 while awaiting the birth of her second child; she signed the contract with the publishers while en route to the hospital. A later novel, 1949's The Question of Gregory, attracted attention due to the eerie similarities between Gregory and James Forrestal
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense....
, a Defense Secretary
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
and acquaintance of the Janeways who committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Janeway denied any connection between fact and fiction; she said the real theme of the book was "liberals
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
in trouble".
All in all Janeway wrote seven novels; one, 1945's Daisy Kenyon
Daisy Kenyon
Daisy Kenyon is a 20th Century Fox feature film starring Joan Crawford, Henry Fonda, and Dana Andrews in a story about a post-World War II romantic triangle. The screenplay by David Hertz was based upon a 1945 novel by Elizabeth Janeway. The film was directed and produced by Otto Preminger. Daisy...
, was made into a film starring Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
. For a time Janeway was a reviewer for the New York Times. In that capacity she introduced writer Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
and served as a champion of controversial works such as Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
. She was also a reviewer for Ms. magazine
Ms. magazine
Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...
.
From 1965-1969 she served as president of the Authors Guild, addressing lawmakers about copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
protection and other matters.
Many of Janeway's early works focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society. In the early 1970s, she began a more explicitly feminist path with works such as Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study of Social Mythology. She befriended Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
, Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
and Kate Millett
Kate Millett
Kate Millett is an American lesbian feminist writer and activist. A seminal influence on second-wave feminism, Millet is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.-Career:...
and was strongly in favor of abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
rights. Janeway continued to write and go on lecture tours. She learned to speak Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
so that she could visit the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Janeway was a judge for the National Book Awards in 1955 and for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
in 1971. She was an executive of International PEN
International PEN
PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, her alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
awarded Janeway its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
Elizabeth Hall Janeway died at her Rye, New York
Rye (city), New York
Rye is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is separate from the town of Rye, which is larger than the city. Rye city, formerly the village of Rye, was part of the town until 1942, when it received its charter as a city, the most recent to be issued in New York...
home. She is survived by two sons: Columbia Graduate School of Journalism professor, Boston Globe editor and former Atlantic Monthly executive Michael Janeway and William Hall Janeway, until 2006 a Vice Chairman at Warburg Pincus
Warburg Pincus
Warburg Pincus, LLC is an American private equity firm with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil and Asia. It has been a private equity investor since 1966...
, as well as by three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.