Marcet Haldeman-Julius (née Anna Marcet Haldeman; June 18, 1887 – February 13, 1941) was an American feminist, actress, playwright, civil rights advocate, editor, author, and bank president.
She was born in Girard, Kansas, the daughter of physician Henry Winfield Haldeman and his wife Alice. Alice was the sister of social activist Jane Addams, with whom Marcet maintained a close relation until the end of the Addams's life.[1]
Marcet studied at the Rockford Seminary for Young Ladies (alma mater also of her aunt Jane[2]) and then the Dearborn Seminary in Chicago, until the death of her father in 1905, followed by Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. While at Bryn Mawr she became one of the closest friends and confidantes of the poet Marianne Moore.[3][4] After three years she left the college to continue her stage acting, graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1910.[5] Between 1910 and 1915 she performed with the Orpheum Players and other stock companies in Newark, New York, Montreal, St. Louis and other cities, under the name Jean Marcet.[6]
Marcet's father and mother ran the Bank of Girard. When her mother Alice died in 1915, Marcet once again returned to her hometown, where she took over management of the bank. That same year she founded The Jolly Club in nearby Radley, for the benefit of the many young immigrants (from numerous countries, but especially Italy) who had come to work in the area's mines. The Jolly Club provided English lessons, practical training and safe diversion.[7] The following year she began to found other clubs as well, including one for younger boys and an Italian language club. These became quite popular and in 1921 she turned one of them into a school, where she taught. During her youth Marcet had spent many summers with her aunt, Jane Addams, at Hull House; she credited Addams with much of her inspiration and over the years the two of them discussed Marcet's clubs both in person and through correspondence.[8]
In 1916 she married activist and publisher Emanuel Julius. At her aunt Jane's suggestion,[9] both partners adopted the surname Haldeman-Julius.[10] They wrote both separately and together, their most well-known collaboration being the 1921 novel Dust. "She travelled to the Soviet Union in 1931-1932 to report on the status of the Russian Revolution for The American Freeman. […] In the 1930s she did numerous articles and short stories with John W. Gunn, a writer for the Haldeman-Julius press."[11] In 1932 she was a delegate to the National Convention of the Socialist Party of America[12] and that same year Emanuel ran for Senate on the Socialist Party ticket.[13]
Marcet and Emanuel had two children, Alice (1917–1991) and Henry (1919–1990) and adopted a third, Josephine (b. 1910). "In 1933 the couple legally was separated but continued to live in the same house",[14] though she "spent a lot of her time at the [Addams] family farm in Cedarville."[15]
Marcet died of cancer in Girard in 1941 and is buried in Cedarville, Illinois. Her epitaph is a paraphrase of the one W. K. Clifford wrote for himself: "I was not, and was conceived. I loved, and did a little work. I am not, and am content."[16] Her papers are held at Kansas State University Libraries,[17] Bryn Mawr,[18]Pittsburg State University,[19] the University of Illinois at Chicago[20] and Indiana University.[21]
Addams, Jane. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams (edd. Mary Lynn Bryan and Barbara Bair). Urbana: Univ. Illinois Press, 2002 (vol. 1) and 2009 (vol. 2).
Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War (ed. Katherine Joslin). Urbana: Univ. Illinois Press, 2002 [1922], pp. xvi-xvii, xxv-xxvi.
Barrett-Fox, Jason. Feminism, Socialism, and Pragmatism in the Life of Marcet Haldeman-Julius, 1887-1941 (thesis, University of Kansas, 2008; online at KU here).
Barrett-Fox, Jason. “A Rhetorical Recovery: Self-Avowal and Self-Displacement in the Life, Fiction, and Nonfiction of Marcet Haldeman-Julius, 1921-1936.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 21.1 (2010), pp. 14–30 (abstract).
Barrett-Fox, Jason. Feminisms, Publics, and Rhetorical Indirections: Figuring Marcet Haldeman-Julius, Anita Loos, and Mae West, 1905-1930 (diss., Univ. Kansas, 2013).
Breaux, Richard M. "Using the Press to Fight Jim Crow at Two White Midwestern Universities, 1900-1940" in The History of Discrimination in U.S. Education (ed. E.H. Tamura). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 141–164.
Brown, Melanie Ann. Five-Cent Culture at the "University in Print": Radical Ideology and the Marketplace in E. Haldeman-Julius's Little Blue Books, 1919-1929 (diss., Univ. Minnesota, 2006; see here).
Burnett, Betty. "Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel." American National Biography (edd. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes). 24 vols. New York: OUP, 1999. Vol. 9.
Davis, Rebecca L. "'Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry: The Companionate Marriage Controversy." Journal of American History, vol. 94, no. 4 (March, 2008), pp. 1137–1163.
DeGruson, Eugene. "Afterword." Washburn Univ. Center for Kansas Studies, 1992.[32]
Gunn, John W. "Marcet." Girard: Haldeman-Julius, 1941.
Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "Haldeman, Sarah Alice (Addams)" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
Leavell, Linda. Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
^See Addams, Selected Papers (Bryan & Bair) in bibliography, both volumes passim. "Marcet immediately became the focus of attention and affection for a small family circle that included her Uncle George Haldeman, Grandmother Anna Addams, and parents. Jane Addams was also a doting aunt. […] For the remainder of Jane Addams's life and as Marcet grew to maturity, the Haldemans made sure that their daughter and her close Illinois relatives saw each other regularly. Alice Haldeman took her to visit family in Illinois at least once each year, usually during the summer. They customarily stayed for a time with Jane Addams at Hull-House and also stopped in Cedarville with [Sarah] Weber [(Addams)] and Laura Shoemaker Addams[,] so Marcet could visit her grandmother Anna Addams and Uncle George Haldeman" (from Vol. 1, p. 522).
^“Settling the Sunflower State: Jolly Club provided service for youth”, Laurence Journal-World, 13 Dec. 1981, p. 13. See photo here.
^See Barrett-Fox in bibliography, pp. 56-59, online here.
^Julie Herrada, "Emanuel Haldeman-Julius", The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, p. 375.
^"Soon after arriving in Girard, Julius made the observation that the area had only two interesting women: one an art teacher in Fort Scott, the other the vice president of a Girard bank. He pursued the banker, and within six months, on June 1, 1916, they were wedded at the Addams homestead in Cedarville, Illinois. Six months after the wedding, their name was legally changed to the now familiar ‘Haldeman-Julius.’ They were soon starting a family, raising registered cattle, and writing fiction together" (Gene DeGruson, "Afterword").
^Quoted from a finding aid for the special collections of the Univ. Illinois Chicago library (ca. 1969, p. 1). Though dated, the aid has some useful information about the extended Haldeman(-Julius) and Addams families.
^Richard J. Daley Library, MSHald72; see hereArchived 2015-09-28 at the Wayback Machine. "The collection is rich in material on all aspects of Marcet's life and provides an interesting look at the intellectual currents in the Midwest during the period between the two World Wars" (finding aid, p. 1).
^Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Haldeman mss. [I], II and III. See here.
^Haldeman-Julius Monthly, vol. 2.4 (Sept. 1925), pp. 323-347. Included in Clarence Darrow's Two Great Trials (1927). Excerpt here.
^Haldeman-Julius Monthly Vol. 2.5 (October, 1925), pp. 387-397; online here.
^Excerpts regarding the Sweet Trials here and here.
^The man killed was John Carter of Little Rock; see the Arkansas Timeshere.
^The question of "companionate marriage" became an urgent and controversial one in 1927, when Marcet and Emanuel's 18-year-old daughter Josephine entered into such an arrangement at the Haldeman-Julius home. See R.L. Davis in the bibliography.
^This concerned the University of Kansas and in particular its medical school. For background, see here.
Media related to Anna Marcet Haldeman at Wikimedia Commons.
Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "Haldeman, Sarah Alice (Addams)" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
