Emily Hahn (1) [1905–1997]

Emily Hahn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, one of six daughters in a Jewish American family of German origin. Her parents were Isaac Newton Hahn, a dry goods salesman, and his wife Hannah Schoen Hahn, a suffragist. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when she was in high school. Emily initially enrolled in a general arts program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but changed her course of study to mining engineering after being told by a professor that the female mind was incapable of grasping mechanics or higher mathematics. In 1926, she became the first woman to receive a degree in Mining Engineering at the University. Prior to graduating, she drove 2,400 miles across the USA dressed as a man with a friend, Dorothy Raper. During the trip, she wrote about her travel experiences to her brother-in-law, who showed the letters to The New Yorker, jump-starting her career as a writer. Emily wrote for The New Yorker from 1929 to 1996. Her first book, the tongue-in-cheek Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction--A Beginner's Handbook, was published in 1930. She went on to study mineralogy at Columbia University and anthropology at Oxford, working in between as an oil geologist, a teacher, and a guide in New Mexico. She hiked across Central Africa in the 1930s. In 1935, she traveled to Shanghai, China, where she taught English for three years and became acquainted with prominent figures such as Sir Victor Sassoon, Mao Zedong, Zhou EnLai, and the Soong sisters. She had a romance with poet and publisher Shao Xunmei. After moving to Hong Kong, she began an affair with Major Charles Boxer, the local head of British army intelligence, with whom she had a daughter. When the Japanese army marched into Hong Kong a few weeks later in World War II, Maj. Boxer was imprisoned in a POW camp. Emily was brought in for questioning, but was not interned after she stated she was married to Shao Xunmei, and was sent back to the USA in 1943. Her book about this period, China to Me (1944) became an instant hit with the public. Her reunion with Boxer after the war also made headlines; the couple married and settled in Dorset, England, and had a second daughter. In 1950, Emily rented an apartment in New York, and from then on visited her husband and children in England only occasionally. She wrote biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Aphra Behn, James Brooke, Fanny Burney, Chiang Kai-shek, D.H. Lawrence, and Mabel Dodge Luhan; books about cooking, zoos, diamonds, natural history, and travel; novels; and books for children. In total, she was the author of 54 books and nearly 200 articles.