To be young was very heaven

by Sandra Adickes

In the years before World War I, New York City's Greenwich Village was a place of great artistic and political ferment. Political causes attracted throngs of supporters. Artistic movements filled cafes and restaurants with boisterous conversation. And for the first time, women began to seize power and play important roles in the political and artistic landscape of the time: Margaret Sanger began her crusade for birth control. Mabel Dodge hosted her salons for the avant-garde. Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Workers Movement. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn helped to organize the Workers of the World. The list of women who played integral roles in American life and letters during this time is endless, and Sandra Adickes captures them all, from Emma Goldman to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, while evoking the now-lost paradise that New York offered to women at the turn of the century.