Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell was an influential American writer and journalist, known for his contributions to early 20th-century literature and leftist political thought. Born in Illinois and raised in poverty, Dell developed a passion for reading and writing from an early age, working as a journalist for various publications, including the Chicago Evening Post and later, The Masses and The Liberator in New York City. His literary career included notable novels such as *Moon-Calf* and *Diana Stair*, with themes often drawn from his personal experiences and social issues, including labor organizing and the abolition movement.
Dell's radical political views, particularly his antiwar stance, led to government scrutiny during the Red Scare, impacting his public reception and literary career. Despite facing censorship and criticism, he produced a diverse body of work, including fiction, plays, and influential nonfiction that explored psychological and sociological themes. He was an active participant in the cultural movements of his time, particularly in Chicago and Greenwich Village, and his legacy includes induction into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2015. Dell's life and works reflect a complex interplay of art, politics, and social commentary during a transformative period in American history.
Subject Terms
Floyd Dell
American novelist, journalist, playwright, poet, nonfiction writer, and editor.
- Born: June 28, 1887
- Birthplace: Barry, Illinois
- Died: July 23, 1969
- Place of death:Bethesda, Maryland
Biography
Floyd Dell grew up on the Mississippi River towns of Quincy, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa. He was born in Illinois, the son of a father who worked blue-collar job and a mother who was a teacher. The family lived in poverty after Dell’s father lost his job as a butcher, and the their humble conditions had a great deal of influence on Dell’s life. Dell’s mother made sure that her son became an avid reader, and when Dell left high school, he began to write for a socialist newspaper in Davenport. His journalist’s credentials were substantial enough to land a job with the Chicago Evening Post in 1908. Dell rose to become editor of the paper’s Friday Literary Review. By the time Dell left Chicago in 1913, he had become a prime mover in the Chicago Renaissance, and he traveled in the same circles as famous authors like Upton Sinclair and Sherwood Anderson.
Dell was an equally significant figure in the literary, artistic and social circles of New York City’s Greenwich Village. Dell’s radical politics fell afoul of the United States government, though, when in 1919 he was implicated in antiwar and antigovernment charges levied against editors of The Masses, the magazine he worked for in New York. Dell had editorialized about and advocated for conscientious objectors, but the government could not prove the validity of the charges, and the editors of The Masses avoided prosecution. By then, Dell became associated with The Masses’s successor, The Liberator.
Dell and Berta Marie Gage were married in 1919. They moved out of the city. Dell took a sabbatical from The Liberator and finished his first novel, Moon-Calf, which was published in 1920. Moon-Calf was based on Dell’s life in the Mississippi River towns so significant in Dell’s early years. Dell followed in 1921 with The Briary-Bush, which exploited autobiographical elements of his Chicago years.
Janet March, published in 1923, was pulled from stores after the publisher feared legal action over Dell’s depiction of sex in the novel. While more modern writes would later benefit from the titillation of such negative publicity, the tenor of 1920s instead meant Dell was something of a literary pariah. The lingering effects of the Red Scare that resulted from American paranoia about the Bolshevik Revolution further isolated Dell from many potential readers.
Dell’s best novel may have been his 1932 Diana Stair, set in the American South before the Civil War. Diana Stair treated abolition, labor organizing, and experimental collectives. The following year, Dell published Homecoming: An Autobiography, which some considered a history of the American Left in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dell’s nonfiction work Love in the Machine Age: A Psychological Study of the Transition from Patriarchal Society, earned favorable assessment by Margaret Mead, whose review deemed it a commendable view of child rearing. Dell spent 1935 to 1947 in the employ of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), writing reports and government pamphlets. His pacifist writings and his overt leftward leanings precluded him from participating in the war effort. Dell died in 1969. He was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2015.
Author Works
Drama:
Human Nature: A Very Short Morality Play, 1913
Chaste Adventures of Joseph: A Comedy, 1914
Ibsen Revisited: A Piece of Foolishness, 1914
Enigma, A Domestic Conversation, 1915
Rim of the World: A Fantasy, 1915
Legend: A Romance, 1915
King Arthur's Socks, and Other Village Plays, pr. 1916, pb. 1922
Long Time Ago: A Tragic Fantasy, 1917
The Angel Intrudes: A Play in One Act as Played by the Provincetown Players, pr. 1917, pb. 1918
Sweet-and-Twenty: A Comedy, 1918
Poor Harold: A Comedy, 1920
Little Accident, 1928
Edited text(s):
Wilfred Scawen Blunt: Poems, 1923
Robert Herrick: Poems, 1924
William Blake: Poems and Prose, 1925
John Reed: Daughter of the Revolution, and Other Stories, 1927
Long Fiction:
Moon-Calf, 1920
The Briary-Bush, 1921
Janet March, 1923
Runaway, 1925
This Mad Ideal, 1925
Love in Greenwich Village, 1926
An Old Man's Folly, 1926
An Unmarried Father, 1927
Love Without Money, 1931
Diana Stair, 1932
The Golden Spike, 1934
Nonfiction:
Women as World Builders, 1913
Were You Ever a Child?, 1919
Looking at Life, 1926
The Outline of Marriage, 1926
Upton Sinclair: A Study in Social Protest, 1927
Love in the Machine Age: A Psychological Study of the Transition from Patriarchal Society, 1930
Homecoming: An Autobiography, 1933
Government Aid During the Depression to Professional, Technical and Other Service Workers, 1947
Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935–43, 1947
Bibliography
Clayton, Douglas. Floyd Dell: The Life and Times of an American Rebel. I. R. Dee, 1994. The main book-length biography of Dell.
Dell, Floyd. Homecoming. Harper Paperbacks, 1997. Dell's autobiography provides details of his life through age thirty-five.
Dell, Jerri. Blood Too Bright: Floyd Dell Remembers Edna St. Vincent Millay. Glenmere Press, 2017. This book by Dell's granddaughter draws on Dell's letters and unpublished memoir to tell the story of his relationship with author Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Faludi, Susan. "Feminism for Them?." Baffler, no. 24, Jan. 2014, p. 148–43. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=96778971&site=eds-live. Discusses Dell's championship of the feminist cause, including how his male perspective shaped his views.
"Floyd Dell." Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, 2017, chicagoliteraryhof.org/inductees/profile/floyd-dell. Accessed 21 June 2017. Provides a biographical overview of Dell along with a bibliography and links to further resources.