Sarah Aldridge

Sarah Aldridge was the pen name of Anyda Marchant (January 27, 1911 in Rio de Janeiro – January 11, 2006), who was a founding partner for Naiad Press 1973 and A&M Books in 1995, and a writer of primarily lesbian popular fiction.

Early life and career

Marchant was the daughter of Langworthy and Maude Marchant, and moved with her family to Washington, D.C. at age six.

According to her obit in the Washington Post, she told USA Today in a 1992 article she recalled as a young girl seeing women in the suffragist movement "being arrested in Lafayette Park and bundled into paddy wagons."

Later, as a law student, she served for a year as assistant to women's rights pioneer Alice Paul, who was then doing research for an Equal Rights Amendment and whom she deemed "among the very greatest of the feminists."

After earning her undergraduate degree, followed in 1933 by her law degree from the National University of Washington, D.C. (now George Washington University), she was admitted to practice in Virginia and Washington D.C., and before the US Court of Claims and the US Supreme Court.

One of the first women to pass the bar in Washington DC,[1] she served the World Bank as an attorney in the Legal Department for 18 years until retiring in 1972.

As Sarah Aldridge, she was the author of many literary works. Her first published work was a short story issued by The Ladder,[2] the periodical released by the Daughters of Bilitis. The fourteen lesbian novels she wrote include All True Lovers, Tottie, A Flight of Angels, The Latecomer, and The Nesting Place.

She met legal secretary Muriel Inez Crawford (April 21, 1914 – June 7, 2006)[3] in 1947. The couple was together for 57 years until Aldridge's death.

Aldridge died at her home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on January 11, 2006. She was 94. Her death preceded Crawford’s by 6 months.[4] She was awarded the Golden Crown Literary Society Trailblazer Award posthumously in June 2007.

Her first novel The Latecomer was reissued in 2009 in a 35th anniversary edition by A&M Books. In addition to the novel, editor Fay Jacobs collected essays[5] from a vast array of lesbian icons attesting to Aldridge's lasting impact as a pioneer of early lesbian writing. This volume became the first of her work to appear in digital format in 2009.

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References
  1. Lambda Literary Foundation WordIsUp
  2. Windy City Media Obituary
  3. Koymasky Living Room Bios Archived 2006-03-01 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Shinhoster Lamb, Yvonne (February 7, 2006). "Anyda Marchant; Author, Publisher". The Washington Post.
  5. The Latecomer Legacy Project
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