Margaret Parton

{{Short description|American journalist}}

Margaret Parton (1915 – 1981) was an American author, critic, and journalist. Her parents were journalists, prominent in their day: Lemuel F. Parton, and Mary Field Parton.{{Cite web|url=http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv75255|title=Archives West: Margaret Parton papers, 1885-1981|website=archiveswest.orbiscascade.org}} Her career was long and eventful, including a great deal of crime and foreign reporting, and contact with many influential personalities in literary, political and legal affairs. From the mid 1940s, she was a beat writer for the New York Herald Tribune in Asia, working first in India and later in Japan.{{Cite news|title=Margaret Parton, Ex-Reporter for New York Herald Tribune|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/12/obituaries/margaret-parton-ex-reporter-for-new-york-herald-tribune.html|date=12 August 1981|work=The New York Times}}

Her three autobiographical works were Laughter on the Hill, 1945, which dealt with her Bohemian experiences in San Francisco; The Leaf and the Flame describing her experience as a journalist in India at the time of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi; and her final autobiography: Journey Through A Lighted Room 1973

An extensive collection of her papers is accessible at the University of Oregon Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives: Margaret Parton papers.{{Cite web|url=https://scua.uoregon.edu/repositories/2/resources/1960|title=Collection: Margaret Parton papers | Special Collections and University Archives Collections Database|website=scua.uoregon.edu}}