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Elizabeth Janeway

Author profile

born

October 07, 1913 in Brooklyn, NY, The United States

died

January 15, 2005

genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction, Biographies & Memoirs

About this author

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American author and critic born Elizabeth Ames Hall. When her family fell on hard times during the Depression, Janeway was forced to end her Swarthmore College education and help support the family by creating bargain basement sale slogans (she graduated from Barnard College just a few years later, in 1935).

Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts).

The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other lumina...more American author and critic born Elizabeth Ames Hall. When her family fell on hard times during the Depression, Janeway was forced to end her Swarthmore College education and help support the family by creating bargain basement sale slogans (she graduated from Barnard College just a few years later, in 1935).

Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts).

The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other luminaries of the day.

At the behest of labor organizer Walter Reuther, she aided General Motors workers with their mid-1940s strike against the company.

Her 1949 novel The Question of Gregory attracted attention due to the eerie similarities between Gregory and James Forrestal, a Defense Secretary and acquaintance of the Janeways who committed suicide. Janeway denied any connection between fact and fiction; she said the real theme of the book was "liberals in trouble".

In all, Janeway wrote seven novels; one, 1945's Daisy Kenyon, was made into a film starring Joan Crawford. For a time she was a reviewer for the New York Times. In that capacity she introduced writer Anthony Powell and served as a champion of controversial works such as Lolita. She was also a reviewer for Ms. magazine.

From 1965-1969 she served as president of the Authors Guild, addressing lawmakers about copyright protection and other matters.

Many of Janeway's early works focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society. In the early 1970s, she began a more explicitly feminist path with works such as Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study of Social Mythology. She befriended Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Kate Millet and was strongly in favor of abortion rights. Janeway continued to write and go on lecture tours. She learned to speak Russian so that she could visit the Soviet Union.

Janeway was a judge for the National Book Awards in 1955 and for the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. She was an executive of International PEN. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, her alma mater Barnard College awarded Janeway its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.

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Books by Elizabeth Janeway

Average rating: 3.60 · 478 ratings · 46 reviews · 18 distinct works

	The Vikings (Landmark Books) (Landmark Books) 3.94 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1951 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Early Days of Automobiles in America (Landmark Books #68) 3.17 avg rating — 6 ratings	My rating:
	Mans World Womans Place: A Study In Social Mythology 3.60 avg rating — 5 ratings	My rating:
	Leaving Home by Elizabeth Janeway, Rachel M. Brownstein (Afterword) 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1993	My rating:
	Powers of the Weak 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1981 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Daisy Kenyon 2.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1945	My rating:
	Between Myth And Morning: Women Awakening 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1974 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Ivanov Seven 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1967 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Walsh Girls 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1943	My rating:
	The Third Choice 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1959	My rating: