Grace Hodgson Flandrau

Grace Hodgson Flandrau (April 23, 1886-December 27, 1971) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She attended finishing school in the city and read the volumes in her father’s library at home. After her father died, Grace and her mother and sister travelled around the United States and East Asia for six years. Soon after returning from Asia, Grace married William Blair Flandrau and moved with him to his coffee plantation in Mexico. Due to danger from the Mexican Civil War, Grace Flandrau returned to St. Paul, where she developed her writing skills. In her will, Flandrau established the Charles Macomb Flandrau Fund at Harvard University to honor her brother-in-law; she also gifted money to the University of Arizona, with which they built Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium.

Grace Flandrau was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, journalism, letters, speeches, memoir notes, and diaries. She wrote six books in her lifetime, three of which satirized the high society which she and her husband were a part of. Beginning to make a name for herself, the Great Northern Railway hired Flandrau to write their promotional pamphlets, and she showed her talent for writing well-crafted and well-researched nonfiction. Her travel memoir, Then I Saw the Congo, received high praise. Flandrau’s height of fame was in the 1930s; when she began writing and publishing personal stories, including the fact that she was illegitimate, Flandrau’s fame waned. Still, in her time, Flandrau had a significant impact on both the Minnesota social world and the Minnesota literary world.