Queen of Bohemia
Predicts Own Death:

Gilded-Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris

A trailblazing journalist who took on New York's Gilded-Age injustices

Zoe Anderson Norris (1860-1914), a Kentucky belle turned trailblazing Manhattan journalist, set out “to fight for the poor with my pen.” Whether unmasking slumlords and corrupt politicians, advocating for impoverished immigrants, or encouraging women to seize control of their own destinies, she captured the injustices of her era with wit and tenacity. This first biography of Zoe (as everyone called her) illuminates her work as a novelist, publisher, and reformer who gave voice to the oppressed. In her self-published periodical The East Side, she sometimes reported undercover dressed as a beggar, to immerse herself in the experience of harsh tenement life. She also led the Ragged Edge Klub, a bohemian gathering of artists, writers, and social critics who rejected the status quo, while facing her own struggles with minimal publishing profits, tumultuous relationships, and ostracization for her outspokenness. In The East Side’s last issue, she eerily predicted her own death, a premonition that made national headlines, and then she fell into undeserved obscurity. This book, in rescuing her legacy, explores how her battles against xenophobia resonate in our tumultuous times.

“A daring story told with exceptional verve,” raves Amy Reading, Pulitzer finalist biographer of New Yorker editor Katharine S. White