author
Mary Knight
1898–1996
A journalist who later turned to children's fiction, she drew on a wide-ranging career that included reporting from Paris and a deep interest in storytelling. Her best-known book, The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tails, reworked Chinese folklore into a lively tale for young readers.
1 Audiobook
Red blight
by Mary Knight
About the author
Born Mary Lamar Knight in 1899, she was the daughter of Georgia historian and writer Lucian Lamar Knight. Archival records at Emory University describe her as an author, journalist, and lecturer, and note that she was one of the first women news correspondents for United Press International and the first woman on its Paris staff from 1930 to 1935.
Her papers also show how her fiction grew out of serious research. Emory's collection includes material for her thesis, The Chinese Fox, which became the 1969 children's book The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tails, published by Macmillan. The story introduced young readers to folklore through the adventures of a fox seeking the magical reward of nine golden tails.
Sources found during this search disagree slightly on her birth year, with archival material giving 1898 and some family-history records giving 1899, but they agree that she died in January 1996. Even with that uncertainty, the picture that emerges is clear: she built an unusually varied literary life, moving from pioneering international journalism to imaginative writing for children.