Alfred LeRoy Hodder (September 18, 1866 – March 3, 1907) was an American author, attorney, Bryn Mawr College professor, private secretary to Manhattan District Attorney William Travers Jerome, muckraking journalist, and voice of the Progressive movement.
A bestselling novelist in the early 20th century, Hodder was friends with many influential thinkers of the time, including Leo Stein, Josiah Flynt Willard, and Hutchins Hapgood.[1] He is perhaps best known today for his part in a love quadrangle that rocked the early years of Bryn Mawr College where, known as the "Byron of Bryn Mawr," he was a professor from 1895 to 1898.[2] This love scandal involved Hodder; his common-law wife, pianist Jessie Donaldson Hodder; his boss, the powerful women's educator and Bryn Mawr Dean and President Martha Carey Thomas; and his colleague, Professor Mary (Mamie) Mackall Gwinn, the longtime live-in lover of President Thomas.[3] The scandal threatened the legitimacy of President Thomas’ tenure. Gertrude Stein fictionalized this complicated love quadrangle in her first novel, written around 1904 but published by Alice B. Toklas only after Stein's death, entitled Fernhurst: The History of Phillip Redfern, A Student of the Nature of Women, with Hodder as the inspiration for Phillip Redfern.[4] Stein later expanded this plot in her thousand-page magnum opus, The Making of Americans, published in 1925.[5]
- ^ The Editors (1942). Who Was Who in America.
{{cite book}}:|last1=has generic name (help) - ^ "Alfred and Mary Mackall Gwinn Hodder Papers". Princeton University, Firestone Library, Dept of Rare Books and Special Collections.
- ^ Lefkowitz Horowitz, Helen. The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. University of Illinois Press.
- ^ Wineapple, Brenda. Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. University of Nebraska Press.
- ^ Malcolm, Janet (2005). "Someone Says Yes to It: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and The Making of the Americans". The New Yorker.