Anne W. Armstrong

Anne W. Armstrong
Anne W. Armstrong (1924)
Born	Anne Audubon Wetzell (1872-09-20)September 20, 1872 Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States
Died	March 17, 1958(1958-03-17) (aged 85) Abingdon, Virginia, United States
Occupation	businesswoman, novelist
Education	Mount Holyoke College University of Chicago
Notable works	The Seas of God (1915) This Day and Time (1930)
Spouse	Leonard T. Waldron Robert F. Armstrong
Children	Roger Waldron
Relatives	Adelia Armstrong Lutz (sister-in-law)

Anne Wetzell Armstrong (September 20, 1872 – March 17, 1958) was an American novelist and businesswoman, active primarily in the first half of the 20th century. She is best known for her novel, This Day and Time, an account of life in a rural Appalachian community. She was also a pioneering woman in business management, and was the first woman to lecture before the Harvard School of Business and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business in the early 1920s.

Armstrong was born Anne Audubon Wetzell in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1872. In the 1880s, her family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where her father operated a lumber company. She attended Mount Holyoke College, where she wrote for the school's newspaper, and later attended the University of Chicago. She had returned to Knoxville by 1892, when she married Leonard T. Waldron. They had one son before divorcing in 1894. In 1905, she married Robert F. Armstrong.

Armstrong published her first novel, The Seas of God, in 1915. In 1918, she was hired as a personnel director for the National City Company of New York. She later gave an account of her early days with this company in her article, "A Woman in Wall Street by One," which was published in Atlantic Monthly in 1925. In 1919, Armstrong was hired as the Assistant Manager for Industrial Relations for Eastman Kodak, and continued in this position until 1923. During the latter half of the decade, she published several articles in Harper's Monthly and Atlantic Monthly that focused on the emerging role of women in business.

In the late 1920s, Armstrong retired and moved to the Big Creek community in rural Sullivan County, Tennessee, which would provide the inspiration for her 1930 novel, This Day and Time. During this same period, she began a correspondence with author Thomas Wolfe, and began writing her autobiography, Of Time and Knoxville, a portion of which was published as "The Branner House" in The Yale Review in 1938. Three of Wolfe's letters to Armstrong were published in the 1956 collection, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe.