MAX EASTMAN - AUTOGRAPH 11/03/1936 CO-SIGNED BY: JAMES STEPHENS - HFSID 88057

MAX EASTMAN, CO-SIGNED BY: JAMES STEPHENS, CYNTHIA STEPHENS
Autograph album page signed and dated by American writer and activist Max Stephens and by Irish poet and novelist James Stephens and his wife "Cynthia".
Signature: "James Stephens", "Cynthia Stephens/Albuquerque Nov. 23rd 1935" and "Max Eastman/Scranton Nov 3. 1936" , 5½x8½ album leaf. MAX EASTMAN (1883-1969, born in Canandaigua, New York) was an American writer. He settled in Manhattan's Greenwich Village and founded the Men's League for Women's Suffrage in 1910. He became an important figure in Greenwich Village and became editor of the socialist magazine The Masses in 1913. The magazine was forced to close in 1918 under the Espionage Act because it denounced United States participation in World War I, and Eastman stood trial, and was acquitted, twice under the Sedition Act of 1918. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1923 to see how Marxism worked in practice. The trip drastically changed his views of the Soviet Union and, upon returning to the United States, wrote several essays that were critical of Stalinism. He retained his leftist ideas after returning to America, but had largely abandoned them by the 1940s. He became a roving editor for Reader's Digest in 1941 and wrote articles criticizing socialism and communism and supporting McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, culminating in Reflections on the Failure of Socialism in 1955. JAMES STEPHENS (1882-1969, born in Dublin, Ireland) was an Irish poet and novelist who is best remembered for his retellings of Irish fairy tales in Dublin's slums. He began writing seriously while working as a solicitor's clerk, when he met the Irish poet George William Russell. Russell encouraged him to publish his first book of poetry, Insurrections (1909). His first novel, The Charwoman's Daughter (1911), appeared in a magazine that he helped to found, The Irish Review, and his next book, The Crock of Gold (912) made him famous. His other works include Irish Fairy Tales (1920), Deirdre (1923) and a classic account of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin called The Insurrection in Ireland (1916). CYNTHIA STEPHENS (1882-1960, born Millicent Josephine Gardiner Kavanagh)was his wife. Lightly toned. Random ink stains. Six binder holes on left. Otherwise, fine condition.