GELLHORN, MARTHA

Martha Gellhorn (November 8, 1908–February 15, 1998) was a relief investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) during the 1930s. Gellhorn later provided vivid coverage of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) as a reporter for Collier's Weekly. In addition, she is known for fictional accounts of her experiences, including What Mad Pursuit (1934), The Trouble I've Seen (1936), and The Lowest Trees Have Tops (1967).

Gellhorn began her college studies at Bryn Mawr in 1924, but she left in 1927 before completing her degree. She wrote briefly for the Albany Times Union, and then began sending pieces to The New Republic, which published her first signed piece, a review of a Rudy Vallee performance, in August 1929. Gellhorn then traveled to France in 1930 and struggled to find permanent journalistic employment for several years.

In October 1934, Gellhorn returned in New York and secured an interview with Harry L. Hopkins, the director of FERA. Her new job required her to travel extensively and interview average Americans about their economic well-being, including their access to adequate food and medical care and their overall outlook for the future. She traveled to small textile towns in North Carolina, large urban areas such as Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, and desperate manufacturing towns like Camden, New Jersey. She wrote Hopkins meticulous reports, detailing malnutrition, rates of tuberculosis, lack of running water, and people's inability to secure employment at a living wage. She severely criticized local relief officials, particularly for graft and corruption, but she noted that most people with whom she talked did not blame President Roosevelt. Instead they held him in very high esteem. She met with Eleanor Roosevelt, and the two soon became good friends. Gellhorn worked as a FERA investigator for almost a year, and by the time she was done, she noted that the mood in the country was becoming more pessimistic and skeptical regarding the government's plans for reform. After leaving FERA, she wrote a fictionalized account of her travels and experiences, published in 1936 as The Trouble I've Seen.

Gellhorn met Ernest Hemingway in 1936, and they struck up a companionship that later led to a brief marriage. In March 1937, she arrived in Spain and began to cover the war for Collier's Weekly. This launched her journalistic career, and she moved from the Spanish Civil War, to the tumult in Germany, and finally to World War II.

Following World War II, Gellhorn continued her focus on wartime reporting, covering the Six-Day War in the Middle East, the Vietnam War, and conflicts in Central America. In addition to publishing regular articles in the Atlantic Monthly, Gellhorn tackled issues of social justice, including the McCarthy trials, in her novel The Lowest Trees Have Tops.

GELLHORN, MARTHA

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