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Mary Moss
Mary Moss
	Photograph of Mary Moss, c. 1903
Born	September 24, 1864; Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	April 2, 1914 (aged 49); Catania, Sicily, Italy
Resting place	Sicily, Italy
Notable works	Fruit Out of Season (1902); A Sequence in Hearts (1903); Julian Meldola (1903);

Mary Moss (September 24, 1864 – April 2, 1914) was an American author and literary critic.

Biography

Mary Moss was born in Philadelphia to Dr. William Moss and Mary Noronha.^[2] She was a member an old and prominent Philadelphia Jewish family.^[3] Her great-grandfather was businessman Hyman Levy, in whose fur store John Jacob Astor was an apprentice.^[4] During the American Civil War, her father served as a private soldier in the 16st Pennsylvania Volunteers and as a surgeon in the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment.^[5]^[6] She was educated at a private school in Chestnut Hill.^[7]

In 1900 Moss began writing for the Philadelphia Times and the Philadelphia Press, to which she contributed sketches on the Yiddish theater and other subjects.^[8]^[9] From 1902 she was a prolific contributor of fiction and essays to various magazines. Her Jewish novel Julian Meldohla appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in 1903. Besides two other novels, Fruit Out of Season (1902) and A Sequence in Hearts (1903),^[10] she contributed short stories and essays to the Atlantic Monthly, McClure's Magazine, The Bookman, Ainslee's Magazine, and Scribner's Magazine.^[11]^[12]

On her success as an author, Moss said of herself:

"Facts about me are terribly meagre. If I had to live over again and knew this 'fame' was to be thrust upon me I'd mis-spend every Saturday afternoon, so as to have a dark past to draw on. As it is, I've alwavs lived here and never experienced anything in the least noteworthy. I've always had a great curiosity about people in general, and very little about people in particular, the neighbours for instance. Always, without knowing why, I simply had to explore different kinds of people, had to understand how they felt about things, how they lived. It was imperative, though I did not realise why, or feel conscious of any definite aim."^[13]

She died at the Rindone Hospital in Catania, Sicily,^[14] several weeks after falling suddenly ill with a brain tumor.^[1]

Selected publications

"Why We Read Samuel Richardson". Lippincott's Magazine. 69 (4): 489–491. April 1902.
"Fruit Out of Season". Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. 70 (418): 385–436. October 1902.
"Julian Meldohla". Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. 71 (423): 289–350. March 1903.
"The Evolution of the Trained Nurse". Atlantic Monthly. 91: 587–599. May 1903.
"Miss Atherton's Wanderjahr". Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. 72 (429): 353–360. September 1903.
"A Pompadour Angel". McClure's. 21 (5): 490–498. September 1903. Illustrated by May Wilson Preston.
A Sequence in Hearts. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 1903.
"An Augur in Kimono". Ainslee's Magazine. 13 (1): 99–102. February 1904.
"The Kangaroos". Scribner's Magazine. 35 (2): 181–188. February 1904. Illustrated by Karl Anderson.
"Judith Liebestraum". Scribner's Magazine. 36 (1): 46–47. July 1904.
"Machine-Made Human Beings". Atlantic Monthly. 94: 264–268. August 1904.
"Marooned". Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. 74 (440): 244–250. August 1904.
"In the City General". Everybody's Magazine. 11 (3): 348–353. September 1904. Illustrated by Charlotte Weber.
"Routed at Brandywine". The Reader Magazine. 5 (2): 157–165. January 1905.
"Significant Tendencies in Current Fiction". Atlantic Monthly. 95: 689–700. May 1905.
"A Plea for Bores". The Bookman. 21 (6): 641–644. August 1905.
"Mr. Nickerson's Star". McClure's Magazine. 26 (6): 664–671. April 1906. Illustrated by May Wilson Preston.
"Shore Leave". Lippincott's Magazine. 78 (2): 206–213. August 1906.
"The Novels of Thomas Hardy". Atlantic Monthly. 98: 354–367. September 1906.
"H. Otway Presents". Ainslee's Magazine. 18 (4): 109–117. November 1906.
"The Jewel of Experience". The Smart Set. 20 (4): 142–147. December 1906.
The Poet and the Parish. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1906. hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t2b855785.
"An Impression of the Fifties". Putnam's Monthly. 3 (4): 389–401. January 1908.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Adler, Cyrus (1905). "Moss, Mary". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 96.

^ ^a ^b "Miss Sargeant Sails From Corsica Today". Harrisburg Telegraph. Vol. 83, no. 84. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. April 9, 1914. p. 6.
^ Stern, Malcolm H. (1960). First American Jewish Families (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Ottenheimer Publishers. p. 214.
^ "About People". The American Israelite. Vol. 60, no. 43. Cincinnati, Ohio. April 23, 1914. p. 7.
^ Hirsch, Emil G., ed. (April 25, 1914). "Domestic News". The Reform Advocate. Chicago, Ill. p. 340.
^ Wittenberg, Eric J. (2007). Rush's Lancers: The Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry in the Civil War. Westholme. p. 236. ISBN 978-1-59416-032-5.
^ "Biographical Sketches of Jews Prominent in the Professions, etc., in the United States". The American Jewish Year Book. 6. American Jewish Committee: 158–159. 1904–1905. JSTOR 23600100.
^ Marquis, Albert Nelson, ed. (1910–1911). Who's Who in America. Vol. 6. Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Co. p. 1375.
^ O'Sullivan, Beth (1997). "Moss, Mary (1864–1914)". In Hyman, Paula E.; More, Deborah Dash (eds.). Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge. pp. 945–946.
^ O'Sullivan, Beth (1999). "Mary Moss". Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved September 23, 2022.
^ "Writers of the Day". The Writer. 16 (10): 154. October 1903.
^ Szold, Henrietta, ed. (1908). "A List of Articles of Jewish Interest". American Jewish Bibliography. Philadelphia: Jewish Public Society of America: 455.
^ The Library Index to Periodicals. Vol. 1. New York. April 1905. p. 80.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ "Chronicle and Comment". The Bookman. 18. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.: 225–226 November 1903.
^ National Archives and Records Administration (1914). Mary Moss. Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835–1974. College Park, Maryland. p. 253 – via Ancestry.com.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)