Mildred Aldrich

Mildred Aldrich (1853–1928) was an American journalist, editor, writer and translator. She spent her early career as a journalist and editor in Boston before moving to Paris, where she continued working as a foreign correspondent and translator. In 1914, shortly before the start of World War I, she retired to a house in the French countryside overlooking the Marne River valley.

Biography Mildred Aldrich was born on November 16, 1853, in Providence, Rhode Island, to Edwin and Lucy Ayers (Baker) Aldrich. She grew up in Boston and graduated from Everett High School in 1872.

Aldrich worked for 12 years as secretary to the manager of the Boston Home Journal and contributed articles using the pseudonym H. Quinn. Ironically, the First World War began three months later, and this site, with its clear view of the Marne River valley, would provide her greatest writing success. It was followed by On the Edge of the War Zone (1917), The Peak of the Load (1918) and When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1919).

A fund established in 1924 by her friends Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas helped support Aldrich in her final years.

In 1926 Aldrich completed an autobiography entitled Confessions of a Breadwinner, which resides in the collections of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. The book has never been published, but digital images of the typed manuscripts are displayed on the Harvard University website.

She suffered a heart attack and died on February 19, 1928, at the American Hospital in Neuilly. She is buried at the Church of St Denis (Cemetery of Quincy-Segy) in Quincy-Voisins, France.