BOOKS: ::: POLITICS: ::: JOURNALIST :::
He was the quintessential rebel and was a major player within the radical Iowa-based Davenport Group. He has since wallowed in obscurity but for the second decade of the 20th century, Dell was a tour de force in American literature. Floyd started out by publishing his own poetry, campaigned for 1904 socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, and edited and wrote reviews for an adjunct to the Chicago Evening Post.
It was in Chicago during that city’s literary golden age that he rekindled his earlier alliance with fellow Iowans, George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell. Come 1915, the trio had snaked thier way from the midwest through Greenwich Village and on to Provincetown to be part of the inner circle during the birth of American modern theatre. He would become the managing editor of Max Eastman’s The Masses and later The Liberator which included articles by Helen Keller. He survived two seperate trials for disseminating subversive literature when they opposed a US role during World War I .
