Clarissa Dixon

Clarissa Belknap Dixon (1851/1852, Hennepin, Illinois – May 15, 1916, Menlo Park, California)[1] was an American labor activist, feminist, writer and poet who lived in Des Moines, Iowa, New York City, Collyer, Kansas, and Menlo Park, California.[2][3] She married an Irishman, Harry Cowell, a writer and printer, gave birth to their son Henry Cowell at age 45 in 1897. The couple divorced in 1903.[4]

Clarissa Dixon Cowell

Dixon's friendships included the writer Jack London during her time among San Francisco bohemians from the early 1890s until 1916.[5] Her only published book is the early feminist novel Janet and Her Dear Phebe (1909),[6] which the New York Times characterized as "a very intense sort of a love story in which the lovers are two little girls who are devoted to each other with that fervency known only to feminine childhood".[7] Marion Zimmer Bradley more recently described the book as: "Girls story of two loving little chums, separated by a misunderstanding between their families, and reunited as women. Though never explicit, the story is emotional and intense. It is highly unlikely the author was quite aware of the type of attachment she was portraying."[8] In 1914, Dixon began a typescript manuscript of biographical details of her son's early life,[9] which she completed before her death from breast cancer in 1916 at age 64.[1]

Notes
  1. Clarissa Dixon in the California, U.S., Death Index, 1905-1939, ancestry.com. Accessed April 13, 2022.
  2. Hicks, Michael Dustin (2002). "Henry Cowell, Bohemian". University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252027512. Retrieved September 14, 2012.
  3. Tommasini, Anthony (March 9, 1997). "Modern Times Catch Up to a Past Maverick". New York Times. p. H31.
  4. Stone, Peter (March 9, 1997). "Sidney and Henry Cowell". Archived from the original on August 19, 2016. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  5. Rich, Alan (2008). "American Pioneers: Ives to Cage and Beyond". Phaidon Press.
  6. Dixon, Clarissa Belknap (1909). "Janet and Her Dear Phebe". Frederick A. Stokes.
  7. "New York Times (1857-1922), Saturday Review of Books, Loves of Little Girls". New York Times. March 13, 1909. p. 141.
  8. Zimmer Bradley, Marion (March 21, 2012). "Checklist: A Complete, Cumulative Checklist of Lesbian, Variant and homosexual fiction, in English or available in English translation". Library of Alexandria. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  9. Dixon, Clarissa (n.d.). "Carl Sandburg-Helen Page Papers, Yale University Library, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Collection of American Literature" (typescript). p. folder 25. hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.sandbrg.
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