Elsa Gidlow - Life and Work

Life and Work

Elsa Gidlow was born Elfie Gidlow on 29 December 1898 in Hull, Yorkshire, England. Sometime around 1904, the Gidlow family emigrated to Tétreaultville, Quebec, Canada. At the age of fifteen, Elsa and her family moved to Montreal. She was first employed by a contact of her father's in Montreal, a factory doctor, as assistant editor to Factory Facts, an in-house magazine. In 1917, she began seeking out fellow writers and meeting with them, particularly in the field of amateur journalism, which was popular at the time. With collaborator Roswell George Mills, Gidlow published Les Mouches Fantastiques, one of the first gay magazines in Canada. H. P. Lovecraft, a fellow amateur journalist, attacked their work, leading Gidlow to defend it and attack back in return; the dispute creaed a minor controversy but brought Gidlow and Mills public, albeit negative attention.

She moved to New York in 1920 at the age of 21. There she was employed by Frank Harris of Pearson's, a magazine supportive of poets and unsympathetic to the war and England. Later, in 1926, she moved to San Francisco, and continued to live, write and love in the San Francisco Bay Area for the rest of her life. In the 1940s, she lived in Fairfax, California, where she became active in local politics. Due to her membership in political and writers' groups allegedly affiliated with communists, she was suspected of being "Un-American" and was subsequently investigated, subpoenaed and forced to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947. HUAC's final report accused her of being affiliated with communist front organizations. However, as a philosophical anarchist Gidlow was ideologically opposed to communism, and she denied the accusation.

In 1954, she purchased a ranch with Roger Somers and his family above Muir Woods on the southwest flank of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Gidlow named the mountain ranch "Druid Heights", a nod to her friend, Irish poet Ella Young. Gidlow and her partner Isabel Grenfell Quallo lived together for a decade at Druid Heights, along with notable residents, including her close friend Alan Watts and feminist theorist Catharine MacKinnon. Gidlow socialized with many famous artists, radical thinkers, mystics, and political activists at Druid Heights, including Ansel Adams, Gary Snyder, Dizzy Gillespie, Neil Young, Tom Robbins, and Margo St. James.

Her autobiography, Elsa, I Come With My Songs: The Autobiography of Elsa Gidlow gives a personal and detailed account of her life seeking, finding and creating a life with other lesbians at a time when little was recorded on the topic.