Florence Finch Kelly

Born in Girard, Illinois, on March 27, 1858, and raised partly in Kansas, she graduated from the University of Kansas with an A.B. in 1881 and an A.M. in 1884. She married newspaper publisher Allen P. Kelly later that year and went on to build a career in journalism at a time when women still faced heavy barriers in the profession.

She contributed to publications including the Boston Globe and the anarchist paper Liberty, and from 1906 into the mid-1930s she worked as a book reviewer for The New York Times. Alongside her journalism, she wrote seven novels, short fiction, and many magazine articles on literary, artistic, and social questions.

Her books include With Hoops of Steel, The Delafield Affair, and Rhoda of the Underground. In 1939, the year of her death, she published Flowing Stream: The Story of Fifty-six Years in American Newspaper Life, a memoir that reflects the range and persistence of her work.