Elsie F. Weil Explained

Elsie F. Weil
Birth Date:	April 27, 1889
Birth Place:	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation:	Writer, journalist, editor

Elsie Frances Weil (April 27, 1889 – after April 1950) was an American writer. She was associate editor of Asia magazine from 1917 to 1925, and managing editor of the same journal from 1932 to 1946. In the 1920s, she wrote about Asian economic and cultural topics for The New York Times.

Early life and education

Weil was born in Chicago, the daughter of Jacob Weil and Paulina Danziger Weil.^[1] Both parents were born in Germany; her father died in 1897.^[2] She graduated from Hyde Park High School, and completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago in 1910. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.^[3]

Career

Weil and her partner Gertrude Emerson traveled in Korea, Japan, India, and China in 1915 and 1916, interviewing political leaders and reporting on sports,^[4] theatre,^[5] and other cultural events. She reported from Morocco in 1919,^{[6] [7]} and from Bermuda in 1926,^[8] and from the American West in 1928.^[9] She corresponded with Edna W. Underwood,^[10] Rose Wilder Lane, Kenneth Durant, and Ernestine Evans in the 1910s and 1920s. Weil was associate editor of Asia magazine from 1917 to 1925, and managing editor of the same journal from 1932 until 1946, when it was rebranded as United Nations World.

In 1928, after flying from Chicago to Kansas City as a passenger on an airmail plane, she suggested that towns paint their names on roofs, to be visible to passengers flying overhead.^[11]

Publications

Many of Weil's travel essays were published in Asia magazine, where she was an editor; others appeared in Travel Magazine, The Lone Hand, World Outlook, The Evening Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Theatre Magazine, and Lippincott's. She wrote the foreword to Thai writer Kumut Chandruang's English-language memoir, My Boyhood in Siam, published in 1938.^[12] As an editor, she also worked with Margaret Landon on the book that became Anna and the King of Siam (1944).^[13]

Chicago topics

• "The Hull House Players" (1913)^[14]
• "Gymnastics for Women at Chicago University" (1913)^[15]
• "Girl Athletes of University of Chicago" (1913)^[16]
• "Eugene Field, the Informal" (1915)^[17]

Asia topics

• "Korea: Japan's Willing Vassal" (1916, with Gertrude Emerson)^[18]
• "Japan Wants Justice: Interview with Count Okuma, Premier of Japan" (1916, with Gertrude Emerson)^[19]
• "New Homes for China's Millions" (1917, with Gertrude Emerson)^[20]
• "The Wu-Han Cities" (1917)^[21]
• "Japan Learns to Do Business" (1917)^[22]
• "The Boy Emperor of China" (1917)^[23]
• "Training Japanese for Emigration" (1917)^[24]
• "A Little Woman of Big Enterprises" (1918, profile of Yone Suzuki)^[25]
• "Modern Drama Finds Welcome on the Japanese Native Stage" (1918)
• "The Land Where Beauty is a Necessity" (1918)^[26]
• "Bokhara and Samarkhand" (1918)^[27]
• "Buddha's Path in China" (1919)
• "Craftsmen of Old Japan" (1920)^[28]
• "Pipes of Peace" (1922)^[29]
• "Hungry India Learning American Farm Methods" (1926)^[30]
• "Rubber Future in Philippines" (1926)^[31]
• "Heirs of the Japanese Sun Goddess" (1927)^[32]
• "Turkish Motif Offered Our Architecture" (1929)^[33]
• "Unseeing Eyes of the East" (1932)^[34]

Other topics

• "Through the Gates of the Moghreb" (1919)
• "Egypt Invites Bigger Trade" (1926)^[35]
• "Guarding New York's Food is a Huge Task" (1926)^[36]
• "New York a Centre of Pan-American Life" (1929)^[37]
• "Preserving the Indian Sign Language" (1931)^[38]
• "Of Orientals Shipwrecked in America" (1937)^[39]
• "Topsy-Turvy Household" (1950, book review)^[40]

Personal life

Weil had a longtime professional and personal relationship with fellow writer Gertrude Emerson, beginning in 1914; they traveled together, and shared an apartment in New York City. Emerson married a man in India in 1932. Weil's papers are in the University of Michigan's William L. Clements Library.^[41]

Notes and References

1. Elsie F. Weil's application for a United States passport, dated August 1915, National Archives, via Ancestry.
2. News: December 18, 1897 . Deaths . Chicago Tribune . 5 . Newspapers.com.
3. University of Chicago, Cap and Gown (1910 yearbook): 74; via Ancestry.
4. News: June 3, 1919 . Japs Devoted to Wrestling . Daily Republican-Register . 2 . Newspapers.com.
5. Weil . Elsie F. . March 16, 1918 . Modern Drama Finds Welcome on the Japanese Native Stage . The Evening Post . 32.
6. News: October 17, 1919 . Camping in Old Morocco . Bayonne Review . 11 . Newspapers.com.
7. News: August 14, 1919 . In the Heart of Moorish Cities . The Canton Independent-Sentinel . 3 . Newspapers.com.
8. News: December 10, 1926 . Mauve Decade Lingers in Colorful Bermuda . Davis Enterprise . 2 . Newspapers.com.
9. News: August 28, 1928 . Indian Races Dwindling Rapidly . The Kentucky Post . 10 . Newspapers.com.
10. Book: Craine, Carol Ward . Mrs. Underwood: Linguist, Littérateuse . 1965 . Fort Hays Kansas State College . 37 . en.
11. News: July 3, 1928 . Woman Writer Arrives by Air . Kansas City Journal . 14 . Newspapers.com.
12. News: December 28, 1940 . Wunderkind Not Over Wonderful . Honolulu Star-Bulletin . 28 . Newspapers.com.
13. Ma . Sheng-mei . 2003 . Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Chopsticks" Musicals . Literature/Film Quarterly . 31 . 1 . 17–26 . 43797092 . 0090-4260.
14. Weil, Elsie F. “The Hull House Players” Theatre Magazine 18(September 1913): 19-22.
15. Weil . Elsie F. . July 1913 . Gymnastics for Women at Chicago University . The Posse Gymnasium Journal . 21 . 7 . 3–5.
16. Weil . Elsie F. . July 6, 1913 . Girl Athletes of University of Chicago . The Inter Ocean Magazine . 21 . Newspapers.com.
17. Weil . Elsie F. . October 1915 . Eugene Field, the Informal . Lippincott's Monthly Magazine . 96 . 109–110.
18. Weil . Elsie F. . Emerson . Gertrude . November 1916 . Korea, Japan's Willing Vassal . Travel Magazine . 28 . 1 . 9–13.
19. Weil . Elsie F. . Emerson . Gertrude . September 1, 1916 . Japan Wants Justice: Interview with Count Okuma, Premier of Japan . The Lone Hand . 19 . 205–206.
20. Weil, Elsie F., and Gertrude Emerson. "New Homes for China's Millions" Asia: Journal of the American Asiatic Association 17(March 1917): 25-29.
21. Weil . Elsie F. . May 1917 . The Wu-Han Cities . Asia: Journal of the American Asiatic Association . 17 . 183–190.
22. Weil . Elsie F. . September 1917 . Japan Learns to Do Business . World Outlook . 3 . 9 . 3–5.
23. Weil . Elsie F. . August 1917 . The Boy Emperor of China . Asia: Journal of the American Asiatic Association . 17 . 442–448.
24. Weil . Elsie F. . November 1917 . Training Japanese for Emigration . Asia: Journal of the American Asiatic Association . 17 . 722–728.
25. Elsie F. Weil, "A Little Woman of Big Enterprises" World Outlook (September 1918): 10.
26. Weil . Elsie F. . March 1918 . The Land Where Beauty is a Necessity . Travel . 30 . 30–33.
27. News: November 5, 1918 . Flower and Fruit of Islam's Art . Oakland Enquirer . 4 . Newspapers.com.
28. News: March 21, 1920 . Under Japanese Umbrellas . Birmingham Post-Herald . 52 . Newspapers.com.
29. News: April 4, 1922 . Where Everyone Smokes . The News and Advance . 8 . Newspapers.com.
30. News: Weil . Elsie . June 13, 1926 . Hungry India Learning American Farm Methods . The New York Times . 13.
31. News: Weil . Elsie . August 15, 1926 . Rubber Future in Philippines . The New York Times . 14.
32. Weil, Elsie. “Heirs of the Japanese Sun Goddess” Asia 27 (March 1927), p. 177-182, 245.
33. News: Weil . Elsie . March 10, 1929 . Turkish Motif Offered Our Architecture . The New York Times Magazine . 18.
34. Weil, Elsie. "Unseeing eyes of the east" Asia and the Americas 32, no. 3 (1932): 161-168.
35. News: Weil . Elsie . September 26, 1926 . Egypt Invites Bigger Trade . The New York Times . 17.
36. News: Weil . Elsie . August 1, 1926 . Guarding New York's Food is a Huge Task . The New York TImes . 5.
37. News: Weil . Elsie . September 15, 1929 . New York a Centre of Pan-American Life . The New York Times . 12.
38. Weil, Elsie. "Preserving the Indian Sign Language" New York Times Magazine 8 (1931).
39. Weil, Elsie. "Of Orientals Shipwrecked in America" New York Herald Tribune 3 (1937): I3.
40. News: Weil . Elsie . September 3, 1950 . Topsy-Turvy Household . The New York Times Book Review . 4.
41. https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-wcl-M-3201wei Elsie F. Weil Collection finding aid