Federation Club Women Tell Publishers Want They to Read, June 19, 1924

What Do Women Want to Read?

The prize-winning essay of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs upon the subject, “What Do the Two Million Seven Hundred Thousand Federated Club Women Want from the Publishers?” won by Mrs. John B. Roberts of Philadelphia, is presented in the June International Book Review.

The essence of the successful composition is: “We “Club women want books that are interesting. We want biography that shows a man’s soul as well as the facts of his life. We want autobiography that is not conceited. . . .

“We want poetry that sings, and also poetry that gives us a jolt, meter or free verse, but it must be poetry that makes us feel. . . . We want poetry that wakes an echo in our souls, that shows us new beauty in the world, new meaning in old, eternal truth, new depths in the heart of man.

“We want fiction that is true to life. That does not mean it may not be imaginative. We want truth, not pathological treatise. Truth is not indecency. All truth is not nasty. We have not jaded appetites.

“We do not prefer our mutton a little high, or bury or salmon, like Alaskan Indians, till it become putrid. We feel that the lack of reticence of some writers become a bit shallow. They probably know nothing worse or they would have told it.

“We do not want books that point a moral. We prefer to make our own deductions. We want books about living souls.”

The prizes, considerably augmented by additional gifts from the Publisher’s Weekly and Frederick A. Stokes, will be awarded at the 19th biennial convention of the Federatin, which will be held in the Burdette Auditorium at Los Angeles, California, from June 3 to June 13. It is also planned to promulgate ways and means of raising the standards of publications to meet the expressed desires of the affiliated women at this time.

From the Literary Digest as printed in The Chowanian, Chowan University student newspaper, Murfreesboro, N.C., June 19, 1924, page 6