At a time when women had limited rights and career options, Martha Louise Rayne (1836-1911) was a determined and prolific writer with an impressive legacy. Rayne wrote for several papers including The Chicago Tribune (where she used the penname “Vic”), The Chicago Record-Herold and The Detroit Free Press. She penned several novels and many short stories.
She was the editor of Chicago Magazine of Fashion, Music and Home Reading. An 1870 review of her Chicago Magazine of Fashion stated, “It is not alone that her magazine is fully up in the fashionable intelligence of the period, but there is a vein of common sense running through it, and a distinctive literary character to it which none of the other magazines possess, while, in addition to these qualities, there is a daintiness and neatness about its outside appearance which reflect the highest credit upon the good taste of Mrs. Rayne.”
While not what we would consider a feminist, Rayne was interested in helping women advance in the professional world. In 1883 she authored What Can a Woman Do: Or Her Position in the Business and Literary Worlds. The book was a guide for women looking for occupations that were available and suitable for females at that time. The book influenced many including photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. Following the publication of this popular book, others played with variations on Rayne’s title including: What a Woman Can do – a subtle but telling alteration. Rayne also penned etiquette books that reflected her sense of humor along with her ability to give every-day advice.
In 1886, Rayne founded a school of journalism (reportedly the first such institution in the world) dedicated to training women in the skills needed to establish literary careers. This was at a time when higher education was difficult, if not impossible, for most women to obtain.
Being a female journalist did occasionally have its advantage – when Mary Lincoln was confined to a sanitarium in west suburban Batavia she refused to speak to male reporters. Consequently, Rayne was the only reporter permitted to interview President Lincoln’s widow. Rayne’s subsequent article was instrumental in securing Mrs. Lincoln’s release from that mental institution.
Mrs. Lincoln was not the only celebrity Rayne covered, she also reported on the wedding of Ulysses S. Grant’s son, and interviewed President Grover Cleveland, and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Rayne was posthumously inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Michigan’s Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002.
. At the end of her life, Rayne moved in with one of her two remaining daughters in Oak Park, where she died in 1911. Rayne, though, continued to write up until her death – showing quite eloquently “what a woman can do.” Rayne is buried at Forest Home Cemetery.
(References: Archival Chicago Tribune, Michigan Women Forward, Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, Graphics Collection of Firestone Library – Princeton University)