James Tiptree, Jr. - Early Life

Early Life

Bradley came from a family in the intellectual enclave of Hyde Park, a university neighborhood in Chicago. Her father was Herbert Bradley, a lawyer and naturalist, and her mother was Mary Hastings Bradley, a prolific writer of fiction and travel books. She travelled the world with her parents from an early age. In 1921–22, the Bradleys made their first trip to central Africa, which later contributed to Sheldon’s short story, "The Women Men Don't See." She was a graphic artist and a painter, and — under the name "Alice Bradley Davey" — an art critic for the Chicago Sun between 1941 and 1942. She met and married William Davey, her first husband, at age 19 because she felt as if it was her duty as a daughter. They were married from 1934 until 1941.

In 1942 she joined the United States Army Air Forces and worked in the Army Air Forces photointelligence group. She later was promoted to major, a high rank for women. In the army, she "felt she was among free women for the first time." In 1945 she married her second husband, Huntington D Sheldon, at the close of the war on her assignment in Paris and she was discharged from the military in 1946, at which time she set up a small business in partnership with her husband. The same year her first story ("The Lucky Ones") was published in the November 16, 1946 issue of The New Yorker, and credited to "Alice Bradley" in the magazine itself, but to "Alice Bradley Sheldon" in the magazine's DVD index. In 1952 she and her husband were invited to join the CIA. She resigned in 1955 to return to college.

She studied for her Bachelor of Arts degree at American University (1957–59), going on to achieve a doctorate at George Washington University in Experimental Psychology in 1967. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the responses of animals to novel stimuli in differing environments. After receiving her doctorate in experimental psychology in 1967, she submitted a few science fiction stories under the name James Tiptree Jr. to protect her academic reputation.

Sheldon had a complex relationship with her sexual orientation, putting different terms to use over the years. "I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up."