Introduction

About Mary Tappan Wright.

From my Wikipedia article on the author at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Tappan_Wright.

     Mary Tappan Wright (1851-1916) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her acute characterizations and depictions of academic life. She was the wife of classical scholar John Henry Wright and the mother of legal scholar and utopian novelist Austin Tappan Wright and geographer John Kirtland Wright.
     Wright was born Mary Tappan December 18, 1851 in Steubenville, Ohio, the daughter of Eli Todd Tappan, president of Kenyon College, and Lydia (McDowell) Tappan. She married, April 2, 1878, John Henry Wright, then an associate professor of Greek at Dartmouth College and later professor of classical philology and dean of the Collegiate Board of Johns Hopkins University, professor of Greek at Harvard University, and dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The couple had three children, Elizabeth Tappan Wright (who died young), Austin Tappan Wright, and John Kirtland Wright. They lived successively in Hanover, New Hampshire, Baltimore, Maryland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, aside from one period during which John they resided in Greece. Wright’s husband died November 25, 1908, and she herself died August 28, 1916 in Cambridge. She was survived by her two sons.
     Wright’s first known published story was “How They Cured Him,” in the March 24, 1887 isues of The Youth’s Companion, one of several written for that periodical. Her tales for Scribner’s Magazine, beginning with “As Haggards of the Rock” (May 1890), attracted more notice, and the initial six of them were collected in her first book, A Truce, and Other Stories (1895). None of her subsequent short stories were gathered into book form during her lifetime.
     Much of her fiction, including her first, third and fourth novels, dealt with American university life. Her first novel, Aliens (1902), attracted much attention for its portrait of contemporary northerners in a racially tense Southern college town. The Test (1904), the story of a wronged young woman, met with mixed reviews, though generally praised as well-written. The Tower (1906) was described as “a love story placed against the life of a college community taken from the faculty side and told with deep understanding and the most delicate art” and The Charioteers (1912) as “a story of the social life and environment of college professors and their families.”
     Wright’s books were published by Charles Scribner’s Sons and D. Appleton & Company. Her short works appeared in Scribner’s Magazine, The Youth’s Companion, Christian Union, The Outlook, The Independent, Harper’s Magazine, and Harper’s Weekly.
     Wright’s writing was praised as having “a keen sense of humor, good descriptive powers, a good working knowledge of human nature, an effective style” and the ability to “tell a story well.” Her skill at characterization was also noted.
     Wright’s papers are found in various archival collections the Harvard University Library and the Houghton Library at Harvard College. An early commonplace book from 1870-77 is in the Stone-Wright family papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Bibliography of Known Published Writings.

About MTW | Note

The following listing is as complete as current knowledge allows. It was compiled on the basis of the online OCLC database of the holdings of numerous libraries around the country and the world, the venerable literary magazine index The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature and its online counterpart The Reader’s Guide Retrospective (which however erroneously attributes to Wright one story, "Limitations," written by Edith Wyatt), and the invaluable electronic historical compendium of Amerian magazines American Peridicals Series Online, 1740-1900. All of these resources provide comparatively comprehensive coverage of prominent publications while neglecting to a greater or lesser degree the more obscure. It is more than likely that some of Wright’s published tales have eluded the net, and remain to be rediscovered by some enterprising researcher.
It should be noted that a considerable number of unpublished stories, along with drafts and fragments, are also preserved among Wright’s papers at the Harvard University Library.

Novels

Aliens (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902)
The Test (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904)
The Tower (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906)
The Charioteers (D. Appleton & Company, 1912)

Collections

A Truce, and Other Stories (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895)
Pro Tempore, and Other Stories (Fleabonnet Press, 2007)
Dead Letters, and Other Pieces (Fleabonnet Press, 2008)
Beginning Alone, and Other Stories (Fleabonnet Press, 2008)

Short stories

“How They Cured Him” (The Youth’s Companion, v. 60, no. 12, Mar. 24, 1887; reprinted in Parry’s Monthly Magazine v. 3, no. 10, Jul. 1887)
“Alice’s Christmas” (The Youth’s Companion, v. 62, no. 41, Dec. 19, 1889)
“Numbered With Thy Saints” (The Youth’s Companion, v. 63, no. 14, Apr. 3, 1890)
“As Haggards of the Rock” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 7, no. 5, May 1890)
“Beginning Alone” (The Youth’s Companion, v. 63, no. 36, Sep. 4, 1890, v. 63, no. 37, Sep. 11, 1890, v. 63, no. 38, Sep. 18, 1890, v. 63, no. 39, Sep. 25, 1890, v. 63, no. 40, Oct, 2, 1890, v. 63, no. 41, Oct. 9, 1890, v. 63, no. 42, Oct. 16, 1890, v. 63, no. 43, Oct. 23, 1890)
“A Truce” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 9, no. 1, Jan. 1891)
“A Fragment of a Play, With a Chorus” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 9, no. 5, May 1891)
“Divided Allegiances” (Christian Union, v. 45, no. 6, Feb. 6, 1892, v. 45, no. 7, Feb. 13, 1892, v. 45, no. 8, Feb. 20, 1892, v. 45, no. 9, Feb. 27, 1892)
“A Lad—Dismissed” (The Outlook, v. 48, no. 2, Jul. 8, 1893, v. 48, no. 3, Jul. 15, 1893, v. 48, no. 4, Jul, 22, 1893, v. 48, no. 5, Jul. 29, 1893, v. 48, no. 6, Aug. 5, 1893, v. 48, no. 7, Aug. 12, 1893)
“The Gray Fur Rug” (The Youth’s Companion, no. 3470, Nov. 23, 1893)
“Deep as First Love” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 15, no. 2, Feb. 1894)
“A Portion of the Tempest” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 15, no. 6, Jun. 1894)
“His Last” (The Youth’s Companion, no. 3498, Jun. 7, 1894, no. 3499, Jun. 14, 1894; reprinted in A Boy Lieutenant, ca. 1905, as “His Last Offence, A Story of College Life”)
“From Macedonia” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 16, no. 4, Oct. 1894)
“Three Fires at Redmont” (The Youth’s Companion, no. 3550, Jun. 6, 1895)
“Cunliffe” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 20, no. 3, Sep. 1896)
“The Key of the Fields” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 23, no. 2, Feb. 1898)
“An Exception” (The Independent, v. 51, no. 2616, Jan. 19, 1899; reprinted in Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture, v. 58, no. 20, Feb. 11, 1899)
“The Best Laid Plans” (projected for publication in The Youth’s Companion in 1900, but not published there; possibly not published at all)
“A Day Together” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 29, no. 1, Jan. 1901)
“Dead Letters” (The Independent, v. 53, no. 2753, Sep. 1901)
“A Sacred Concert” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 34, no. 1, Jul. 1903)
“Vox” (Harper’s Monthly Magazine, v. 107, no. 641, Oct. 1903)
“Pro Tempore” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 39, no. 6, Jun. 1906)
“The Mountain” (Harper’s Weekly, v. 51, no. 2615, Feb. 2, 1907)
“Asphodel” (Scribner’s Magazine, v. 46, no. 4, Oct. 1909)

Reviews

“The Iron Woman” (review of the novel by Margaret Deland) (North American Review, v. 194, no. 673, Dec. 1911)

A Note on the Text.

About MTW | Bibliography

     Mary Tappan Wright’s known published short stories fall into two groups; twelve that initially appeared in Scribner’s Magazine, and eleven which appeared in other publications. Of the former, the first six were gathered together as Wright’s first book, A Truce, and Other Stories (1895), her only story collection issued in her lifetime, now returned to print. The goal of the present publisher is to return her short fiction to print, a project initiated with our earlier collections Pro Tempore, and Other Stories (2007), comprising the rest of the Scribner’s stories, Dead Letters, and Other Pieces (2008), comprising four of the other stories and a couple items of Wright ephemera, and Beginning Alone, and Other Stories, comprising seven of the early tales.
     The six stories herein are from the earlier portion of Wright’s career. All originally appeared in Scribner’s Magazine, and reveal Wright in her more mature, enigmatic mode; her tendency in these works was to relate much of the vital part of the narrative by hint or allusion rather than in what was actually recounted, making the reader collaborate in the creative process by leaving the full story to be constructed as much in the reader’s mind as in what was set down by the author.
     The arrangement of material in this collection follows that of the original edition, with the introduction new to this edition. The overall title is derived from the longest story.
     The texts of the stories are as they appear in their first magazine appearances and the original book edition, which are essentially identical to each other, as the stories were not revised for book publication. The first edition thus having no independent authority, the copytexts utilized are those of the first magazine publications, as reproduced on the Making of America digital library. The text was then checked against the first book edition, from which minor additional material such as the author's dedication were also added. Responsibility for any remaining textual errors are the present editor’s.
     Editorial practice has been as follows. Spelling, grammar and punctuation, where they differ from current standards, have ordinarily been left untouched. Obvious printing errors have been silently corrected. Typography has been brought into accord with modern practice—this has chiefly meant the elimination of superfluous spacing around exclamation points, question marks, and quotation marks, and the reduction of ultra-long dashes.
     With the exceptions noted, what you are about to read should be identical to that which first came under the eye of Wright’s earliest readers over a century ago.

—Brian Kunde, November 11, 2008.

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1st web edition posted 11/11/2008
This page last updated 11/11/2008.

Published by Fleabonnet Press.