author
Mary Forman Ledyard
b. 1867
An educator as well as a writer, she brought a teacher’s eye for language and culture to her books. Her best-known work, Seven Maids of Far Cathay, reflects an early-20th-century American interest in China and women’s education.
1 Audiobook
Seven Maids of Far Cathay: Being English Notes From a Chinese Class Book
by Mary Forman Ledyard, Abertine D. Mandall
About the author
Mary Forman Ledyard was an American author and educator active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Library records connect her with Seven Maids of Far Cathay (1916) and Primary Manual Work, showing that her writing ranged from literary work to practical educational material.
Contemporary newspaper coverage from 1912 identified Mary F. Ledyard as the longtime kindergarten supervisor of the Los Angeles public schools and reported that she was preparing to go to China to help establish a kindergarten system there. A later history of California kindergarten education also notes that Mary F. Ledyard had come from San Jose and led Los Angeles kindergarten work from 1898 to July 1912.
Some catalog records list her as born in 1867, while a grave record points to 1865, so her exact birth year is not entirely clear from the sources reviewed here. What does come through clearly is her strong connection to education, especially early-childhood teaching, and the way that experience shaped her published work.