Irita Van Doren

Irita Bradford Van Doren (born March 16, 1891 in Birmingham; died December 18, 1966) was the book editor for the New York Herald Tribune for 37 years.

The Bradford family moved to Tallahassee, Florida when she was four years old. Irita's father owned a sawmill, but was killed by a former employee in 1900, leaving her mother to support four children by giving music lessons and selling preserves.

Bradford graduated from the Florida State College for Women in 1908 and completed a doctorate in English at Columbia University. While there she met Carl Van Doren, and married him in 1912. They had three children together before divorcing in 1935. After that she was romantically linked to Republican politician Wendell Willkie and helped write speeches for him.

Van Doren joined her husband on the staff of The Nation in 1919, and succeeded him as literary editor for the magazine in 1923. A year later she left to assist Stuart Sherman at the Herald Tribune, succeeding him when he died in 1926. She retired from the paper in 1963. The paper created an "Irita Van Doren Book Award" in her honor in 1960.

References

• "Irita Bradford Van Doren" (May 19, 2014) Wikipedia - accessed April 23, 2015