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Honoré Willsie Morrow, non-fiction writing, and abouts
 

Honoré Willsie at her Desk in “The Delineator” Offices
(from Hildegaarde Hawthorne’s profile in The Book News Monthly (March 1917)

Honoré Willsie Morrow (1880-1940), magazine writer (stories and reportage), novelist, editor (The Delineator).
First marriage was to Henry E. Willsie, a mining engineer and later inventor. Second marriage was to the publisher Henry Morrow. She was an energetic, talented and ambitious writer; her views were the enlightened, elitist, eugenecist views of her time.

Her novels are listed at wikipedia; this page lists —
non-fiction   /   investigative writing and/or social sermonizing; and
sources about Willsie   /   profiles, &c.

▌ bar at left returns to top of page.
 

non-fiction

1. Honoré Willsie, “Propagating Culture by Luxury ; The Manner in Which Wisconsin Instills the Love of Beauty into Its Girls”
   Collier’s 48:18 (January 20, 1912) : 18-19
   Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   on life at Lathrop Hall (women’s residence at Wisconsin State University)
2. Honoré Willsie, “Women and Food Deterioration ; Has the Business of Looking After the Family Table Been Neglected?” — Illustrated by Jean Paleologue
   Collier’s 49:6 (April, 1912) : 22, 24-25
   Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   women need to be better educated, more scientific, in their approach to food; suffrage and pure food laws alone aren’t enough.
   This piece received a letter to the editor from Mary Alden Hopkins, on “The Pure Food Problem” — “but they feel that Mrs. Willsie has not offered a practical working plan for improvement.” — Collier’s (May 18, 1912) : 42 : link
3. Honoré Willsie, “Sound and Madness in Baltimore” — illustrated by Rollin Kirby
   Collier’s 49:17 (July 13, 1912) : 19-20, 25
   Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   a story about the Democratic National Convention, on one “John Henry Smith (which is not his real name), delegate from a Middle Western state.”
   aside — same number commences “Copy,” a story by Peggy Van Braam (treated at asfaltics 2591)
4. Honoré Willsie, “As Ye Do unto These —”
   Collier’s 49:20 (August 3, 1912) : 10-11, 23-24
   Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   on an annual celebration of the Ojibway or Chippewa at the White Earth Indian Reservation, in Minnesota; a long report, sympathetic though somewhat complicated in its sentiments, above all regretting the part of the Whites, the “product of a commercial civilization,” to steal from and destroy the Native Americans.
5. Honoré Willsie, “The Twelfth Marriage”
   a four-installment series that appeared in The Housekeeper (September-December 1912), concluding therefore but two months before the demise of that magazine.

   have not seen / can not find (yet), but from the advertisement in Collier’s (August 3, 1912), those articles were —
   Divorce for drunkenness
   Divorce for cruelty
   Divorce for desertion, and
   Divorce for infidelity (illustrations for this installment, and likely for the others, by Henry Raleigh)

   The Housekeeper ran from 1877 and ceased with 36:4 (February 1913); it was published by Buckeye Publishing Co., Minneapolis, Minnesota.
    

   How Is Divorce Affecting — women in general? — you daughters? — your sons? — your individuality? The Twelfth Mariage a series of articles on Divorce By Honoré Willsie begins in the September Housekeeper and every man and woman should read it. Do you know these facts about Divorce?       Do you know that the United States has the greatest divorce rate in the Christian world?       Do you know that the farther west one goes in Amrica the higher grows the divorce rate?       Do you know that children are affected by every two divorce cases out of five, children whose parents have decided that they can no longer stay together?       Do you know also that alimony is granted to a wife and mother in only one case out over every eleven? Have you ever been told or read that 55 percent of the women in the United States who have gained freedom in the divorce courts become self-supporting?       Do you know that the divorce rate in America increases three times as fast as the rate of increase in population? The first article to be published in the September number of The Housekeeper will be devoted to Divorce for Drunkeness.       This will be followed by three other articles:       Divorce for Cruelty.       Divorce for Desertion.       Divorce for Infidelity. Neither Mrs. Willsie nor The Housekeeper takes any definite stand on what is commonly termed our "National Evil." From her deep and serious study of divorce in this country, Mrs. Willsie has written a wonderful series. The Houseskeeper, in publishing this series, simply puts before its readers a vital question, which each man and each woman must answer individually. When you have read these articles you will have a well-defined idea of how Divorce is affecting you as an individual, is affecting women in general, is affecting your sons, your daughters.       For from these stories you will learn why every twelfth marriage in the United States ends in Divorce. The Housekeeper P. F. Collier & Son, Inc. 416 West 13th Street New York

6. Honoré Willsie, “What Is an American? ; The Suicide of the Anglo-American” — illustrated by John Sloan
   Collier’s 50:8 (November 9, 1912) : 13-14, 42
   Pennsylvania State U copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   aside — eugenics
7. Honoré Willsie, “What Is an American? Part II, The Conquest of the Workingman”
   Collier’s 50:9 (November 16, 1912) : 20-21, 27-28
   Pennsylvania State U copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   aside — immigrants coming in, content to be cog in capitalist machine, driving out quality and honest (White) workingmen...
8. Honoré Willsie, “What Is an American? Part III, The Heritage of the American Woman”
   Collier’s 50:11 (November 30, 1912) : 17, 22, 24
   Pennsylvania State U copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
   aside — “The only form of natural selection left to us is through the relentless selective force of competition. But with the flooding of the countless hordes of immigrants into industry the working of natural selection is distorted...”
9. Honoré Willsie, “What Is an American? Part IV, The Making of the American Child”
   Collier’s 50:13 (December 7, 1912) : 16, 32-33, 36
   Pennsylvania State U copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link

   from last page —

         The schools had Jan for four years, and the years from six until ten are long, vital years in a child’s life. The church would have made a lifelong religionist of him in that time. The American school taught him a little reading and writing and let him go, an embryo anarchist .
         Old established races like the English, the French, or the German can afford, perhaps, to let a child’s idealism seep in as a by-product of his studies. America cannot afford to do this, unless she has come to believe that her institutions can well be modified to suit the political and social desires of the new immigration. If America wants her early ideals to persist she must realize several facts. First, she must formulate the ideals for which she would wish to stand. She must realize that it is the prime business of the disappearing Anglo-American to keep these ideals intact. She must know that there is but one way to make these ideals a part of the character of the immigrant. It is stupid to believe that minds ignorant and superstitious, in bodies underfed and over-worked, will seek these ideals voluntarily.
         America must realize that the future of America is in the hands of the public schools, and that, as far as American ideals are concerned, the public schools are not living up to their job. There is just one way to give the children of our public schools an ideal, and that is to teach it as one does the multiplication table, day in and day out, year after year.
         Teach them that money getting is not money earning. Teach them that they must give more to the world than they take out of it. Teach them chastity. Teach them honesty. Teach them race responsibility. Give them this daily with their spelling lesson. In doing this is America’s one chance to give immediate form to the forces that otherwise will render her formless like themselves.
    

   

   profiles, and other writing about Honoré Willsie

10. wikipedia :
    link
11. Grant Overton devotes a chapter to Honoré Willsie in his The Women Who Make Our Novels (1918) : 342-356 : link
12. much of that chapter leans on (borrows from) Richard La Galliene, “Honoré Willsie, An Appreciation,” in The Book News Monthly 35:7 (March 1917) : 253-254
    link
    which is immediately followed by Hildegard Hawthorne, “Mrs. Willsie and Her New Book ‘Lydia of the Pines’” and
    “A Few Facts About Mrs. Willsie,” from which latter —

    Mr. Willsie [Henry E. Willsie, mining engineer, first husband] had set his heart on winning success as an inventor. Mrs. Willsie had always been secretly determined to become a novelist. Both felt that they needed the opportunities of the metropolis. About 1910 they came to New York. “There is only one man in New York, who will read about deserts,” a friend of Mrs. Willsie told her — “Theodore Dreiser.”
          So to Dreiser she sent her stories...
          For “Harper’s Weekly” and “Collier’s” she wrote a number of special articles on the problems of divorce, immigration and the Reclamation Service...

13. La Galliene references the profile (or rather sketch, with four photographs) by “N. H.” (Norman Hapgood) of “Honoré Willsie” in Harper’s Weekly (January 31, 1914) : 26-27
    Penn State copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
    same (via google books) : link
14. Grant Overton returns to Willsie with more concision in the second (1928) edition of The Women Who Make Our Novels : 216-218 : link —

          It took her a dozen years to discover her real crop. All the while she was writing Western stories she knew something was wrong, without knowing what. To-day she speaks of those earlier romances with savage impatience.
          She became the wife of William Morrow, the New York publisher. She groped her way into the historical background of the Western country. Then she read the diary of Narcissa Whitman and saw before her a bigger novel than she had ever done...

15. Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, ed., Fiction Writers on Fiction Writing : Advice, Opinions and a Statement of Their Own Working Methods by More Than One Hundred Authors (1923) : link

    Honoré Willsie is one of the respondents to the 12 questions set forth herein; here are the answers (will add the questions later).

    1
    I always start with some bit of human philosophy that I want to get over. (41)
    2
    I block the whole story out to the end before I begin the actual writing. Then I write it straight through, long hand, let it rest for a while, write it through long hand again and turn it over to a stenographer. I do very little revising. The story is too clearly planned before I begin to need much of that. (84)
    3
    A whole lot depends on who wrote the story. Robert Louis Stevenson stimulates my imagination to such a degree as regards one of his tales I can answer yes to this group of questions. Joseph Conrad, ditto. Lesser writers in less degree.
    Yes, I see things with my eyes shut in vivid detail and in full color.
    Solid geometry was my favorite form of mathematics and I did well in it.
    All depends on the skill of the author in choice of words.
    As a reader I have no stock pictures.
    I read Lorna Doone and If Winter Comes with equal pleasure. One paints, the other suggests, pictures. But both are presented by masters.
    Much less concentrated effort of imagination in reading than in writing.
    No. (199)
    4
    In writing or revising I never think of the reader. (230)
    5
    Neither. (263)
    6
    I have read and studied current and classic writers constantly as training for my work. (287)
    7
    I think technique is as valuable to the author as to the musician. It is to the story what the steel structure is to the sky-scraper. (310)
    8
    I could not differentiate. All are essential to the finely rounded tale. (331)
    9
    Study story structure every day. Use a dictionary and a thesaurus constantly. Practice the forming of sentences and paragraphs as constantly as you would practice scales were you a musician. I have no suggestions for the practised writer. (367)
    10
    The romantic appeal to the imagination. (388)
    11
    I prefer third-person writing, for, while it is more difficult than first-person writing, it is less apat to have an egotistical ffect on the reader. (405)
    12
    Sometimes. Soft pencil. (428)
     

    

16. a sketch of Honoré Willsie, in “Everybody’s Chimney Corner : Where reader, author and editor gather to talk things over,” in Everybody’s Magazine 46:1 (January 1922) : 179-180
    U California copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
     

    

    Several patents were assigned to Henry E. Willsie (1868-1948), and they are interesting. These are listed below; the two dates are for application and patent granted, respectively :

    939,461 : Machine for melting snow from streets and sidewalks (19021030, 19091109)
    1,110,000 : Apparatus for Utilizing Solar Heat (19030601, 19140623)
    1,101,001 : Method for Utilizing Solar Energy (19031105, 19140623)
    1,113,870 : Apparatus for Utilizing Solar Heat (19030619, 19150309)
    1,234,244 : Concrete Building Block (19090315, granted 19170724)
    1,264,735 : Box closure (19121017, 19180430)
    1,290,455 : Ice-machine (19140307, 19190107)
    1,364,339 : Refrigeration apparatus (19170323, 19210104)
    1,455,823 : Ice machine (19140307, 19230522)
    1,803,159 : Detergent composition and method of making it (19280423, 19310428)
    1,818,181 : Refrigeration apparatus (19261013, 19310811)
    1,870,431 : Refrigerating apparatus and control therefor (19270906, 19320809)
    1,978,520 : Refrigerating apparatus (19310523, 19341030)

    His findagrave page : link
    where it is noted that “Henry was a pioneer in the field of solar energy. He also invented a gas mask called the ‘Willsie Hood’ for the U.S. Army during WWI.”

    Honoré Bryant “Nora” McCue Morrow findagrave page : link
     

25 March 2025