Tarbell, Ida Minerva

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1857–1944, American author, b. Erie co., Pa., grad. Allegheny College (B.A., 1880; M.A., 1883). One of the leading muckrakers, she is remembered for her investigations of industry published in McClure's magazine. Some of them were collected in her History of the Standard Oil Company (1904). She also wrote Life of Abraham Lincoln (1900), other books on Lincoln, and biographies of Elbert H. Gary (1925) and Owen D. Young (1932). Her economic studies culminated in The Nationalizing of Business, 1878–1898 (1936).

See her autobiography, All in the Day's Work (1939).