Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant (1881 – 1965) American journalist and writer; war correspondent WW1

With thanks to our friend Marks Samuels Lasner for reminding me

that I had not yet researched Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant

Elizabeth (Centre) at the
American Hospital, Paris
1918

Known to friends and family as Elsie, Elizabeth was born on 23rd April 1881 in Winchester, Massachusetts, USA.  Her parents were Charles Spencer Sergeant, an executive with the Boston Elevated Railway, and his wife, Elizabeth Blake Shepley Sergeant.  Elizabeth was educated at Miss Winsor's School (now called The Winsor School) in Boston from 1894–1899 and Bryn Mawr College from 1899–1903.

Elizabeth’s younger sister, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, became an editor for the “The New Yorker” and married E. B. White, author of “Charlotte's Web”, who also wrote for “The New Yorker”.  Elizabeth’s nephew Roger Angell, became another writer for “The New Yorker”.

Elizabeth’s first article, "Toilers of the Tenements," was published in 1910 in “McClure's Magazine”, edited at the time by Willa Cather, thus beginning a lifelong friendship between the two women. When the “New Republic”,  an American magazine dealing with politics and the arts,was founded in 1914, Elizabeth became one of its first contributors.

During the First World War, Elizabeth was a war correspondent for the magazine “New Republic”.  She travelled to the Western Front and in 1916 her first book was published – “French Perspectives” – about her experiences in  wartime France.

On 19th October 1918, Eliizabeth was badly injured when her companion picked up a hand grenade that exploded. Elizabeth wrote about her treatment and recovery in her second book, “Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman, 1920.

After the war, on the advice of her doctor, Elizabeth went to live in Taos, New Mexico in 1920. She wrote about the Pueblo Indians and New Mexico until the mid-1930s. Her work was published in the “New Republic” and the “Nation” magazines. She spent extensive time in New York City and at the Macdowell Colony.

In the mid-1930s, John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, hired her to report on Pueblo social conditions and reactions to the Wheeler-Howard Act. Sergeant moved to Piermont in Rockland County, New York. In the 1930s and 1940s and continued to publish magazine articles.

Elizabeth was staying at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York when she died on 26th January 1965. Her wish was to be cremated and have her ashes buried in the Shepley-Sergeant plot in Winchester, Massachusetts.

Elizabeth’s sister Katharine held a memorial service for her on 12th April 1965 at the Cosmopolitan Club.

“Shadow-shapes; the journal of a wounded woman, October 1918-May 1919”
by Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1920)is availabnload https://archive.org/details/shadowshapesjour00serg/page/10

Books by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant

Non fiction

French Perspectives (1916)
Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman (1920)
Fire Under the Andes: A Group of North American Portraits (1927)
Mr. Justice Holmes (1931)
Willa Cather: A Memoir (1953)
Robert Frost: The Trial by Experience (1960)

Fiction

Short as Any Dream (1929)

Sources:

 "Guide to the Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Papers," Yale University Library
 "New York Times, October 24, 1918".
 Davis, Linda H. (1987). Onward and upward : a biography of Katharine S. White. New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp. ISBN 0880641096. OCLC 18559964.
Wikipedia