Background
Edna C. Elliott Meredith was born on April 25, 1879, in Des Moines, Iowa. She was the daughter of Samuel Mathew Elliott and Adeline Mary Jones.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Edna Meredith
Edit ProfileEducation
Meredith grew up in Des Moines and attended Iowa State College.
Career
Meredith's grandfather gave the Tribune to she and her husband as a wedding gift. It was an inauspicious beginning in publishing, for the Tribune had only a small circulation and was a consistent money loser. Edwin Meredith, Edna's husband, changed the paper from a political organ to a magazine of farm information and began a campaign for statewide circulation. He quickly made the journal into a paying venture, but sold it in 1904 in order to concentrate on a new monthly publication, Successful Farming, which he founded in 1902. For eight years the new magazine barely remained solvent, but by 1920 it had become one of the most profitable farm magazines in the nation. Its success made possible an additional publishing venture in 1922, a magazine called Fruit, Garden and Home. In 1924 the name of the new magazine became Better Homes and Gardens. Successful Farming and Better Homes and Gardens formed the basis for the success of the Meredith Publishing Company (1929), which was to become one of twentieth-century America's most successful media corporations. In the meantime, Edwin Meredith, with his wife's active support, had become engaged in politics. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for U. S. senator from Iowa in 1914 and for governor in 1916. In 1920 he was appointed a secretary of agriculture under President Woodrow Wilson and served in that position during the last year of Wilson's term of office. A progressive Democrat, Edwin Meredith supported woman suffrage, prohibition, and policies favorable to farmers. He was considered a strong candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924, when he received 200 votes at the Democratic National Convention. Thereafter Edwin Meredith was a strong supporter of the presidential aspirations of William G. McAdoo in 1924. After McAdoo's withdrawal from the race prior to the 1928 convention, Meredith actively sought the nomination, in an effort to prevent the nomination of Al Smith, whom he felt to be neither "dry" nor sound in his agricultural policies.
Shortly after Smith received the Democratic nomination, Edwin Meredith died on June 17, 1928, and Edna Meredith took up her husband's opposition to Smith's presidential campaign by supporting Herbert Hoover. She supported Hoover again in 1932, this time out of opposition to Roosevelt and, while remaining a Democrat, formed the nonpartisan National Coalition of Women Supporting Alfred M. Landon for President in 1936. In 1940 she announced, in a telegram to the Republican National Committee, that she would join with other Democrats to support Wendell L. Willkie in his campaign against Roosevelt. After her husband's death, Edna Meredith inherited a major interest in the Meredith Publishing Company. She served for many years as a business manager and, later, as director of the corporation. In 1930 the company inaugurated a book division and published The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. By 1968 the cookbook had sold more than 12 million copies. For more than thirty years its sales in the United States were exceeded only by the Bible. In 1943 the company brought out the Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book, which set a sales record for baby books. In addition to the highly successful book division, the Meredith Corporation continued its success with its two major magazines, Successful Farming and Better Homes and Gardens, which are among the most profitable magazines published in America in the twentieth century. She died in Des Moines.
Achievements
Personality
Meredith was described by Frances Parkinson Keyes as "a dainty, exquisite little lady, " well-dressed and having the qualities of simplicity, sweetness, and strength. According to Woman's Home Companion, she was a perfect hostess whose dominant trait was enthusiasm.
In addition to her political and publishing activities, Meredith was known as a philanthropist. Besides donating money to charitable and educational institutions, she started a service club in Des Moines for servicemen (1941) and was later active in the rehabilitation of wounded veterans.
Connections
On January 8, 1896, when only sixteen, Meredith married Edwin Thomas Meredith, a nineteen-year-old former farm boy who had withdrawn from Highland Park College in Des Moines after one year in order to work with his grandfather in publishing Farmer's Tribune, a weekly Populist newspaper. They had two children.
