Heretics & Hellraisers

The Masses was the most dynamic and influential left-wing magazine of the early twentieth century, a touchstone for understanding radical thought and social movements in the United States during that era. As a magazine that supported feminist issues, it played a crucial role in shaping public discourse about women's concerns. Women editors, fiction writers, poets, and activists like Mary Heaton Vorse, Inez Irwin, Jean Starr Untermeyer, Amy Lowell, and Mabel Dodge Luhan contributed as significantly to the magazine as better-known male figures.In this major revisionist work, Margaret C. Jones calls for reexamination of the relevance of Masses feminism to that of the 1990s. She explores women contributors' perspectives on crucial issues: patriarchy, birth control, the labor movement, woman suffrage, pacifism, and ethnicity.Jones also follows the subsequent careers of several prominent contributors - Mary Heaton Vorse, Dorothy Day, Louise Bryant, Adriana Spadoni, Elsie Clews Parsons, Inez Haynes Gillmore, and Helen Hull - to understand later developments in the radical and feminist movements and their relevance to women's issues in the 1990s. The book includes numerous examples of the writings and visual art of Masses women and a series of biographical /bibliographical sketches designed to aid other researchers.This book will be important reading for the fields of American studies, women's studies, and literary and political biography.