Alice Duer Miller

Biography

Alice Duer Miller was born into wealth and privilege on July 28, 1874, on Staten Island, New York, as the daughter of James Gore King Duer and Elizabeth Wilson Meads. Her distinguished family lineage included signers of the United States Constitution and presidents of Columbia College, placing her at the heart of American aristocracy. However, her privileged upbringing took a dramatic turn when the family fortune was lost during the Baring Bank failure, a crisis that would profoundly shape her character and future career. Despite this financial catastrophe, Alice demonstrated remarkable intellectual gifts, attending Barnard College where she studied mathematics and astronomy, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1899 with a prize-winning thesis on 'Dedekind's Theory of the Irrational Number.'

To support herself through college, Alice began her writing career by necessity, selling essays, poems, and stories to prestigious magazines like Harper's and Scribner's. This early professional experience proved invaluable when she married Harvard graduate Henry Wise Miller on October 5, 1899, just three days after they first met. The couple's early years were marked by financial struggle as Henry pursued unsuccessful business ventures in Costa Rica, leaving Alice as the primary breadwinner through her writing. After their return to New York in 1903, Alice taught English composition at a girls' school and tutored mathematics at Barnard until 1907, all while continuing to write and establish her literary reputation.

Alice Duer Miller's career flourished as she became one of America's most versatile and influential writers, achieving success across multiple genres while wielding significant political influence. Her satirical suffrage poems, published in the New York Tribune under the title 'Are Women People?' (1914-1917), became a rallying cry for the women's suffrage movement and helped secure voting rights for American women. Later, her verse novel 'The White Cliffs' (1940) proved equally influential, selling nearly one million copies and, according to Winston Churchill, helping convince Americans to support Britain in World War II. As a member of the prestigious Algonquin Round Table and an advisory editor for The New Yorker, she was at the center of American literary culture, producing over forty books while also working as a successful Hollywood screenwriter. She died on August 22, 1942, in New York City, leaving behind a remarkable legacy as both an entertaining novelist and a writer whose words shaped American political opinion during two crucial periods of social change.

Major Works & Series

Literary Significance & Legacy

Alice Duer Miller holds a unique position in American literature as a writer whose words directly influenced major political and social movements. Her suffrage poetry, particularly the collection 'Are Women People?', revolutionized political satire by using accessible, humorous verse to expose the absurdities of anti-suffrage arguments. The title phrase became a rallying cry for the women's suffrage movement, demonstrating how literary art could serve as an effective tool for social change. Her satirical approach influenced subsequent generations of political writers and established a template for using humor to advance serious social causes.

Beyond her political influence, Miller's literary legacy encompasses her role in bridging high culture and popular entertainment during the early 20th century. As a member of the Algonquin Round Table alongside Dorothy Parker and other literary luminaries, she represented the sophisticated wit of New York's intellectual elite, while her novels and screenplays reached mass audiences through books, stage adaptations, and Hollywood films. Her ability to work successfully across multiple media—from poetry to novels to screenplays—made her one of the first truly multimedia authors. Her influence on American public opinion during two crucial periods—the suffrage movement and World War II—demonstrates literature's capacity to shape national discourse and international relations, establishing her as a writer whose words had measurable impact on the course of American history.

Best Starting Points

• Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times
  Her most historically significant work offers brilliant satirical poetry that reveals her wit and political acumen while providing insight into the suffrage movement.
• The White Cliffs
  Her masterpiece verse novel demonstrates her ability to combine personal emotion with political influence, showing how literature can shape international opinion.
• Come Out of the Kitchen
  Her first major popular success showcases her talent for light romantic comedy and her understanding of what audiences wanted in entertainment fiction.
• Forsaking All Others
  Considered by many to be her greatest literary work, this novel in verse demonstrates her sophisticated approach to combining poetry and narrative.

Famous Characters

• The Suffragist Persona
  The witty, intelligent voice that speaks throughout 'Are Women People?', using humor and logic to demolish anti-suffrage arguments and embody the new American woman seeking political equality.
• The American Wife (The White Cliffs)
  The protagonist who experiences love, loss, and loyalty across two world wars, representing the American perspective on British sacrifice and the bonds between allied nations.
• Various Romantic Heroines
  The spirited, intelligent women who populate her romantic novels, often navigating between traditional expectations and personal agency in early 20th-century society.
• The Social Observer
  The narrative voice in her satirical poems that exposes social hypocrisies and contradictions with sharp wit and moral clarity.