Elinor Rice Hays Explained

Elinor Rice Hays
Birth Name:	Elinor Rice
Birth Date:	October 12, 1901
Birth Place:	New York City
Death Date:	March 21, 1994
Death Place:	New York City
Occupation:	Biographer, novelist
Spouse(S):	George Novack (div. 1942); Paul R. Hays (married 1949)

Elinor S. Rice Hays (October 12, 1901 – March 21, 1994) was an American biographer and novelist.

Early life

Elinor S. Rice was born in New York City,^[1] the daughter of Jacques Bernard Rice and Rose Frankfeld Rice. All of her grandparents were from Bavaria. Her father was a silver merchant.^[2] She graduated from Barnard College in 1923.^[3]

Career

During her first marriage, Rice ran a bookshop and wrote three novels.^[4] She was a member of the Communist League of America.^[5] During the 1960s, she wrote two biographies, one of suffragist Lucy Stone,^[6] and one of the Blackwell family, especially the physician sisters Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell.^[7]

Publications

• The Best Butter (1938, novel)^{[8] [9]}
• Action in Havana (1940, novel)^[10]
• Mirror, Mirror (1946, novel)^{[11] [12]}
• Morning Star: A Biography of Lucy Stone, 1818-1893 (1961, biography)^[13]
• Those Extraordinary Blackwells (1967, biography)^[14]

Personal life

Elinor Rice married twice. Her first husband was George Novack, a Marxist writer.^{[15] [16]} With Novack she was friends with writers Lionel and Diana Trilling. The Novacks divorced in 1942. Her second husband was judge Paul R. Hays; they married in 1949; he died in 1980. She died in 1994, at age 92, in New York City. Her research materials about the Blackwells, and some personal papers, are in the collection of Columbia University Libraries.^[17]

Notes and References

1. News: 1994-03-23 . Elinor Rice Hays, 92, Biographer of Women . en-US . The New York Times . 2022-09-09 . 0362-4331.
2. Web site: Bernard Rice's Silver . 2022-09-09 . Steinmarks UK.
3. Barnard College, Mortarboard (1923 yearbook): 178.
4. News: 1947-01-15 . Books on Parade: Real People . 4 . The Brooklyn Citizen . 2022-09-09 . Newspapers.com.
5. Book: Wald, Alan M. . The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s . 1987 . UNC Press Books . 978-0-8078-4169-3 . 49, 102, 305 . en.
6. News: Beroth . Janet M. . 1961-09-17 . Champion of Women . 125 . Hartford Courant . 2022-09-09 . Newspapers.com.
7. News: Clack . C. Young . 1967-10-29 . Those Blackwells Weren't Ordinary . 54 . Wichita Falls Times . 2022-09-09 . Newspapers.com.
8. Book: Hays, Elinor Rice . The Best Butter . 1938 . W. Morrow . en.
9. News: Evans . Oliver W. . 1938-02-26 . Novelists Join Hunt for Utopia . 19 . Buffalo Evening News . 2022-09-09 . Newspapers.com.
10. Book: Rice, Elinor . Action in Havana . 1940 . Duell, Sloan and Pearce . en.
11. Book: Rice, Elinor . Mirror, Mirror . 1946 . Duell, Sloan and Pearce . en.
12. Book: Hutner, Gordon . What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel, 1920-1960 . 2009 . Univ of North Carolina Press . 978-0-8078-3227-1 . 265 . en.
13. Book: Hays, Elinor Rice . Morning Star . 1961 . Harcourt, Brace & World . en.
14. Book: Hays, Elinor Rice . Those Extraordinary Blackwells . 1967 . en.
15. Wald . Alan M. . 1976 . The Menorah Group Moves Left . Jewish Social Studies . 38 . 3/4 . 289–320 . 4466940 . 0021-6704.
16. Novack . George . George Edward Novack and Evelyn Reed papers, 1933-1992 . University of Wisconsin Madison Libraries.
17. Web site: Elinor Rice Hays papers, 1867-196- . 2022-09-09 . Columbia University Libraries.