Washington Wife; Journal of Ellen Maury Slayden from 1897-1919
New York: Harper & Row, 1963. First Edition. Hardcover. xxiv, [2], 385, [5] pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Index. Damp stains to boards, flyleaves, & a few text pages (no pages stuck). DJ stuck to boards Fore-edge stained. DJ soiled, stained, and wrinkled with several tears to DJ and small pieces missing. Ellen Maury Slayden (1860–1926) was born at the Maury family home, Piedmont, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1860; she received her education from tutors at home. On June 12, 1883, she married James Luther Slayden, a merchant and rancher in San Antonio. Mrs. Slayden served for a time as society editor of the San Antonio Express. Upon her husband's election to Congress in 1896, they moved to Washington, where they maintained a residence for the next twenty-one years. She continued her writing, contributing to various magazines and newspapers, and was a tireless record keeper and diarist. Her notebooks with observations of the social and political life in Washington from 1897 to 1919 were left to her nephew F. Maury Maverick. Ellen Slayden was wise and witty -- and therefore well-respected. Her husband was also well-respected, so they quickly gained the center of Washington political social life. Her husband asked her to keep this journal, which she did faithfully. It is a witty and insightful delight. It was not published until her nephew's widow took on the project and we are all the richer for it. The rapidly changing role of women; the self-righteousness of Prohibition; the crudities of White House entertaining; the troubles with Mexico; the Spanish-American War -- these are all events of Ellen's time in Washington. Derived from a Kirkus review: An inveterate diarist, the Virginia-born Mrs. Slayden kept a punctilious record of the social, political, and historical events of the two between the end of the Spanish-American War and the beginning of World War I of four presidents, dinners in the Washington Social Set, embassy parties, trips abroad, the suffrage movement, and the neuroses of a nation before, during and after war. Condition: as is / Fair.
Keywords: Ellen Maury Slayden, James Slayden, Memoirs, Spanish-American War, WW1, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Texas
[Book #16081]
Price: $31.50