ABSTRACT
At the time, in the Midwest, there was a widespread socialist-populist movement which had its ramifications on the women's movement. The three women who are the subject of this study, Meridel Le Sueur, Tillie Olsen, and Josephine Herbst, came of age in that context. Shaped by the stirrings of progressivism among farmers, workers, and farm-community businesspeople in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa, these three women took the socialism of Debs and the feminism of Anthony a step further and were to make of it an integral part of their work. By the late twenties and early thirties all three had pursued progressive politics to the extent of becoming part of the growing, intellectually important communist milieu. All three began their writing careers in significant ways by writing for New Masses and The Daily Worker, organs of the Communist Party in the United States. While
2 Introduction
Josephine Herbst had already developed skills and prestige in the mainstream press, Olsen and Le Sueur were to get their initiation into publication through the radical press. As women writing about social issues, all three developed a uniquely feminine voice which has allowed them to figure importantly in dialogues in recent times, wherever radical feminist literature is discussed.
