William Marion Reedy was among an elite group of American literary figures who became well-known not only as writers and editors but as catalysts and crusaders for others in the early years of the twentieth century. Many of those he assisted were authors who would become widely recognized and published. Zoe Akins, Kate Chopin, Alice French, Fannie Hurst, John Galsworthy, Orrick Johns, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale, and John Hall Wheelock were all encouraged by Reedy, and their work was found in the pages of the Mirror, Reedy's popular St. Louis-based weekly with an international following.

Reedy was born and reared in Kerry Patch, a north-side section of St. Louis, Missouri, populated mostly with Irish immigrants. His father, Patrick Reedy, a native of Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland, became a St. Louis police captain, and some of Reedy's earliest reporting assignments revolved around police work, his father's beat in Kerry...