Public-domain ebook
All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography
Language: en7,381 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Biographies·History - American·Journalism/Media/Writing
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #63754.
About this book
All in the Day’s Work is an autobiographical memoir by Ida M. Tarbell, a pioneering journalist whose life story is anchored in the turbulence of mid‑nineteenth‑century America. The book opens with a vivid recollection of her birth in a log house in Erie County, Pennsylvania, during the Panic of 1857, and swiftly moves to the hardships her parents endured as they sought a farm in Iowa. Tarbell’s narrative weaves together the details of frontier life, the cramped oak‑planked rooms, the bustling milk room, and the relentless march of settlers on the prairie, while chronicling her father’s itinerant work as a teacher, joiner, and river‑boat captain. These early chapters set the stage for a tale of perseverance, family loyalty, and the restless curiosity that would later define her career in journalism.
The voice is intimate and unpretentious, reflecting the cadence of a woman recalling childhood with both affection and critical insight. Tarbell’s prose, rooted in the language of the 1860s and 1870s, balances descriptive richness with a measured, reflective tone. Readers who appreciate historical memoirs, especially those that illuminate the everyday realities of pioneer families and the formative influences on a later muck‑raking reporter, will find this work both enlightening and emotionally resonant.
Who appears in All in the Day's Work
- Ida M. TarbellYoung woman in late‑19th‑century modest dress, dark hair, thoughtful eyes, simple bonnet
- Walter Raleigh McCulloughElderly pioneer male, grizzled beard, weather‑worn face, plain shirt, log‑house backdrop
Opening lines
Tarbell ALL IN THE DAY’S WORK 1 MY START IN LIFE If it had not been for the Panic of 1857 and the long depression which followed it I should have been born in Taylor County, Iowa. That was what my father and mother had planned. In fact, however, I was born in a log house in Erie County, Pennsylvania, on November 5, 1857. It was the home of my pioneering maternal grandfather Walter Raleigh McCullough. No home in which I have ever lived has left me with pleasanter memories of itself. It was a Cape Cod house, a story and a half high, built of matched hewn logs, its floors of narrow fitted oak planks, its walls ceiled, its “upstairs” finished, a big fireplace in its living room. There were spreading frame outbuildings to accommodate the multiple activities of a farm which was in my time a going concern. …
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