Izola Forrester

Izola Forrester (November 15, 1878 – March 6, 1944) was an American author who was born Izola Louise Wallingford.

Forrester was a pioneer journalist in the heyday of magazine and newspaper publishing in the early part of the 20th century. She was also one of the early women screenwriters of silent films, drawing on her books and stories for their plots, as well as the dramas she was familiar with as a child performer in the 1880s, trouping with her mother Ogarita Booth Henderson (Oct. 23, 1859 - April 12, 1892). Ogarita was a stage actress who believed herself to be the daughter of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U. S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Forrester's father was George Wallingford Hills (Nov. 9, 1853 - Feb. 22, 1923), a Harvard-educated travel writer, but she was brought up by a stepfather, Alexander Henderson, a director of light operas, and later by newspaperman George Forrester and his wife Harriet, who formally adopted her on January 6, 1893, after her mother's death. Izola had one sister, Beatrice Henderson Colony, also a child actress, who became a vaudeville performer, a radio host, and the founder-producer of the Keene Summer Theater in New Hampshire.

Forrester's precocious career as a writer and editor began at the age of 15 in Chicago, where she met banner artist Ruben Robert Merrifield (Sept. 21, 1860 - April 13, 1932). They married on October 29, 1899 in Chicago. She was hired as a feature writer for the New York World, specializing in women's interest stories about public figures, from the leaders of the suffrage movement to the stars of stage and film. She was a regular contributor to many periodicals such as The Saturday Evening Post and McClure's under Managing Editor Willa Cather, as well as the author of over twenty books including the popular Greenacre Girls and Polly Page fiction series. During the period 1907-14, she contributed numerous stories to the pulp magazines, including The Ocean, its successor The Live Wire, and The All-Story.

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