Her Life in Ink: Elizabeth Jordan, Journalist, Editor, and Mystery Author

Unravel the intriguing life of a woman who edited the literary greats of her day and forged a path to the golden age of mystery writing.

Elizabeth Garver Jordan was renowned not only for her own writing but also for her influence in journalism and literature. Her love of intrigue started when she was five and made a secret pact with the family cook, who taught her to read. In her first career as a journalist, Jordan climbed the ranks from columnist to an editor of Pulitzer’s prestigious New YorkWorld Sunday edition, where her work as an investigative journalist took her from the Bowery to the mansions of Fifth Avenue. She specialized in covering murder trials, including that of the notorious Lizzie Borden. But while the Borden trial made Jordan famous, it also led to a scandal that would follow her throughout her life.

As editor for Harper’s Bazar, Jordan changed the magazine into the glossy fashion publication for which it remains famous today. She also emphasized fiction, bringing Jack London, Stephen Crane, Henry James, and many suffragists to its pages. When she moved to Harper books as literary editor, she was instrumental to the successful careers of writers such as Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Fannie Hurst.

But perhaps the most surprising influence Jordan wielded was in the field of mystery writing, as an author herself. Although erased from histories of the genre until now, she was one of the premier American mystery writers of the early twentieth century. Like Agatha Christie, Jordan’s mysteries were high-quality, innovative stories—ranging from locked rooms to country estates to gothic settings—that helped reshape the genre. Here, for the first time, the full story of her life—including her close relationship with Frances Hodgson Burnett—is finally revealed.

Sharon M. Harris is professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919, Rebecca Harding Davis: A Life Among Writers, and a coeditor of A Feminist Reader: Feminist Thought from Sappho to Satrapi. She lives in Washington State.