Charles Edward Russell (1860-1941), American writer and reformer, was a leading Socialist and muckraker.

Charles Edward Russell was born in Davenport, lowa, on Sept. 25, 1860, the son of the abolitionist editor of the Davenport Gazette. Charles learned newspaper skills and attended the St. Johnsbury (Vt.) Academy, from which he graduated in 1881. He then returned to become the Gazette's managing editor. He later became an editor in Minneapolis and Detroit and then moved on to New York City. In 1894 he was city editor of Joseph Pulitzer's World and then a Hearst editor in New York and Chicago.

During his newspaper years Russell was interested in democratic politics; in Populist, single-tax, and other causes; and in music, theater, and poetry. In 1902 his health broke, and he left newspaper work. After traveling abroad, he returned to begin a literary career. His first book, Such Stuff as Dreams (1902), was a volume of...