author

Marguerite-Yerta Méléra

b. 1889

A Swiss-born French-language writer with a transatlantic beginning, she moved across journalism, fiction, criticism, translation, and children’s books. Her work ranged from wartime testimony to literary studies, and she later became the first woman elected to the Institut jurassien des sciences, des lettres et des arts.

1 Audiobook

Six Women and the Invasion

Six Women and the Invasion

by Marguerite-Yerta Méléra, Gabrielle Yerta

About the author

Marguerite-Yerta Méléra was born Yertha Marguerite Juillerat on December 6, 1880, in Elston, Ohio, to a family from the Bernese Jura. Sources describe her as a novelist and writer of Swiss origin who spent much of her career in France, and archival records connect her with Paris later in life.

Her bibliography shows an impressively varied career. In addition to novels, she published essays, literary criticism, translations, poetry, and children’s books. Her name is also attached to Six Women and the Invasion, a World War I-era account that helped bring her work to English-language readers.

Méléra is remembered not only for her writing but also for her place in Swiss literary history: the Jura reference works note that she was the first woman elected to the Institut jurassien des sciences, des lettres et des arts. Some details in online records conflict, including whether her death occurred on December 21 or December 29, 1965, so it is safest to say that she died in Paris in late December 1965.