Her Life in Ink: Elizabeth Jordan, Journalist, Editor, and Mystery Author

In this solid biography, literary scholar Harris (Rebecca Harding Davis) chronicles how mystery writer Elizabeth Jordan helped shape American letters in the early 20th century. Born in 1865, Jordan developed a love of reading during her childhood in Milwaukee, and at 13, she set out to become an author. As a teenager she contributed to local newspapers before landing a reporting job at the World in New York. She excelled, covering many of the day’s most sensational news events, including the case of Lizzie Borden, a Massachusetts woman accused of killing her parents with an axe. In 1900, Jordan became editor at Harper’s Bazaar, where she expanded its fiction offerings, leaving in 1913 to become a literary adviser for Harper and Brothers publishers, where she signed Sinclair Lewis and Frances Hodgson Burnett. Harris points out that Jordan “became to Lewis and many other authors what Maxwell Perkins was to Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Jordan went on to write critically acclaimed books of her own, becoming for more than 20 years before her death in 1947 “one of America’s top mystery writers,” known for novels like The Girl in the Mirror and The Blue Circle. Harris’s attention to detail, dynamic prose, and astute critical skills uncover the significant role Jordan played in American literature. Readers will be impressed. (Feb.)