Cora Mae White Harris
1969 - 1935
Cora Harris was a controversial American author and journalist who, for a time, was the most widely known woman from the state of Georgia. Her book, A Circuit Rider’s Wife (1910) was one of her 19 published works; two of her books were autobiographical, one was a travel journal, and two became feature-length motion pictures; of these, I’d Climb the Highest Mountain starring Susan Hayward (1951) was the most well-known. She also wrote over 200 articles and short stories and well over a thousand book reviews that were published in periodicals, such as the Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and the New York-based Independent, known for its political, social and literary critiques.
Harris was a pioneer in American journalism, being one of the first women war correspondents to work abroad during World War I. Although she was known for her fiction, she became equally well known for her reactionary conservatism, resulting from her first nationally published piece in 1899 about the lynching of Thomas Wilkes (alias Sam Hose) near Newnan, Georgia. In response to an editorial by William Hayes Ward denouncing the act, Harris wrote in support of lynching. Harris’s work, personality, and politics were seen as paradoxical in nature. Some read her book, Co-Citizens as in support of the woman suffrage movement, although others saw it as a thinly veiled attack on feminism, a life that Harris lived in practice, yet rejected in principle. During the last four years of her life, she published a tri-weekly series called “Candlelit Column” in the Atlanta Journal, which some critics have said was some of her best writing.
Harris is the subject of two biographies, Corra Harris: An Analytical Study of Her Novels, by Walter Blackstock (1955) and Corra Harris: Lady of Purpose (1968) by J. S. Talmadge.
Harris was a pioneer in American journalism, being one of the first women war correspondents to work abroad during World War I. Although she was known for her fiction, she became equally well known for her reactionary conservatism, resulting from her first nationally published piece in 1899 about the lynching of Thomas Wilkes (alias Sam Hose) near Newnan, Georgia. In response to an editorial by William Hayes Ward denouncing the act, Harris wrote in support of lynching. Harris’s work, personality, and politics were seen as paradoxical in nature. Some read her book, Co-Citizens as in support of the woman suffrage movement, although others saw it as a thinly veiled attack on feminism, a life that Harris lived in practice, yet rejected in principle. During the last four years of her life, she published a tri-weekly series called “Candlelit Column” in the Atlanta Journal, which some critics have said was some of her best writing.
Harris is the subject of two biographies, Corra Harris: An Analytical Study of Her Novels, by Walter Blackstock (1955) and Corra Harris: Lady of Purpose (1968) by J. S. Talmadge.