Dorothy Dix

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This article is about the journalist. For the 19th-century activist see Dorothea Dix.

Dorothy Dix (November 18, 1861 – December 16, 1951), was the pseudonym of U.S. journalist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer.

As the forerunner of today's popular advice columnists, Dorothy Dix was America's highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on love and marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world. With an estimated audience of 60 million readers, she became a popular and recognized figure on her travels abroad.

Her name is the origin of the term Dorothy Dixer, a widely-used phrase in Australia meaning a question from the floor that enables the speaker to make or strengthen a point he wanted to get across, especially in Parliament.

[edit] Journalism

Gilmer was born on the Woodstock plantation located on the borders of Montgomery County, Tennessee and Todd County, Kentucky. Her journalism career began after a chance meeting with the owner of the New Orleans newspaper Daily Picayune in 1893. Elizabeth first used the pen name Dorothy Dix in 1896 for her column in the Picayune; Dorothy, because she liked the name, and Dix in honor of an old family slave named Mr. Dick who had saved the Meriwether family silver during the Civil War. Within months the column was renamed to Dorothy Dix Talks and under that name was to become the world’s longest-running newspaper feature.

The column's widespread popularity began in 1923 when Dix signed with the Philadelphia-based Public Ledger Syndicate. At various times the column was published in 273 papers. At its peak in 1940, Dix was receiving 100,000 letters a year and her estimated reading audience was about 60 million in countries including United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, South America, China, and Canada. One of her most famous single columns was Dictates for a Happy Life, a ten-point plan for happiness, which had to be frequently reprinted due to popular demand.

In addition to her newspaper columns, Dix was the author of books such as How to Win and Hold a Husband and Every-Day Help for Every-Day People.

On her passing in 1951 at the age of 90, Dorothy Dix was interred in the Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Dorothy Dix, Fables of the Elite (New York: R. F. Fenno & Co, 1902).
  • Dorothy Dix, Mirandy (New York: Hearst's International Library, 1914).
  • Harnett Thomas Kane, Dear Dorothy Dix: The Story of A Compassionate Woman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1952).

[edit] External links