“Dear D”: Sophie Treadwell's 1915 Correspondence from the “Big War Theatre”

Abstract

Although she is best known as the author of the Expressionist drama Machinal, Sophie Treadwell was also a journalist. In 1915, she traveled to France to cover World War I for the San Francisco Bulletin and Harper's Weekly. This paper examines her published and unpublished war correspondence, consisting of articles for the Bulletin framed as letters to “D,” a hypothetical friend back home in California, and a Harper's Weekly article emphasizing women's experience. The paper argues that because Treadwell did not focus on soldiers and fighting, but instead looked at daily life in “the big war theatre,” her work was an effort to develop a female-centered journalistic voice.