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From Prairie Poverty to Princess of Publishing: Ellen Browning Scripps

Thursday, August 17, 2017, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Location: San Diego History Center
Tickets: $5 SDHC members; $10 general admission

Join us for a lecture and book signing with USD history professor and author, Dr. Molly McClain on beloved San Diego philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps.

McClain tells the remarkable story of Ellen Browning Scripps (1836–1932), an American newspaperwoman, feminist, suffragist, abolitionist, and social reformer who used her fortune to support women’s education, the labor movement, and public access to science, the arts, and education.

Born in London, Scripps grew up in rural poverty on the Illinois prairie. She went from rags to riches, living out that cherished American story in which people pull themselves up by their bootstraps with audacity, hard work, and luck. She and her brother E.W. Scripps built America’s largest chain of newspapers, linking Midwestern industrial cities with booming towns in the West. Less well known today than the papers started by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, Scripps newspapers transformed their owners into millionaires almost overnight. By the 1920s Scripps was worth an estimated $30 million, most of which she gave away. She established the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and appeared on the cover of Time magazine after founding Scripps College in Claremont, California. She also provided major financial support to organizations worldwide that promised to advance democratic principles and public education. In Ellen Browning Scripps McClain brings to life an extraordinary woman who played a vital role in the history of women, California, and the American West.

Thursday, August 17, 2017, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Location: San Diego History Center
Tickets: $5 SDHC members; $10 general admission

Praise

“[Ellen Browning Scripps’s] progressive legacy undergirds the best of San Diego. This compelling book breaks the glass ceiling in the genre of Southern California biographies.”

Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

“McClain tells Scripps’s story with verve, suggesting that her example of modest living and exorbitant giving has many lessons for our own gilded age.”

Rebecca Jo Plant, associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego

Author Bio

Molly McClain is a professor of history at the University of San Diego. She is the author of Beaufort: The Duke and His Duchess, 1657–1715 and Schaum’s Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays. She also co-edits the Journal of San Diego History.

Details

Date:
August 17, 2017
Time:
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Cost:
$5 – $10
Event Categories:
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Venue

San Diego History Center
1649 El Prado, Suite 3
San Diego, CA 92101 United States
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Organizer

San Diego History Center
Phone:
(619) 232-6203 ext. 111