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Mary Lerner
1882–1938
A little-known American short story writer, she published widely in major magazines during the 1910s and left behind work admired for its delicacy and emotional insight. Her best-known story, Little Selves, earned lasting attention well beyond her brief writing career.
2 Audiobooks
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories
by Elizabeth Ashe, Katharine Butler, Henry Seidel Canby, Cornelia A. P. (Cornelia Atwood Pratt) Comer, Charles Caldwell Dobie, Madeleine Z. (Madeleine Zabriskie) Doty, H. G. (Harrison Griswold) Dwight, John Galsworthy, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Zephine Humphrey, Mary Lerner, F. J. Louriet, E. V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas, Margaret Lynn, C. A. Mercer, Margaret Prescott Montague, E. (Edith) Nesbit, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Dallas Lore Sharp, Margaret Pollock Sherwood, Ernest Starr, Amy Wentworth Stone, Arthur Russell Taylor
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories
by Elizabeth Ashe, Henry Seidel Canby, Cornelia A. P. (Cornelia Atwood Pratt) Comer, Charles Caldwell Dobie, Madeleine Z. (Madeleine Zabriskie) Doty, H. G. (Harrison Griswold) Dwight, John Galsworthy, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Katharine Butler Hathaway, Zephine Humphrey, Mary Lerner, F. J. Louriet, E. V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas, Margaret Lynn, C. A. Mercer, Margaret Prescott Montague, E. (Edith) Nesbit, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Dallas Lore Sharp, Margaret Pollock Sherwood, Ernest Starr, Amy Wentworth Stone, Arthur Russell Taylor
About the author
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mary Lerner studied at Radcliffe College, where she worked on The Radcliffe Magazine and contributed her own writing. After graduating with honors in 1904, she taught in public schools for a time before turning seriously to fiction.
Her short literary career was concentrated in the 1910s, when she published at least fourteen stories in prominent magazines including McCall’s, Collier’s, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her 1916 story Little Selves, first published in The Atlantic Monthly, was selected for The Twenty Best American Short Stories for 1916 and was later chosen for The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Lerner appears to have stopped writing in the 1920s, reportedly after an injury from a fall. She married Walter Miller in 1933. Though not widely known today, her surviving fiction shows a careful, thoughtful writer whose finest work continued to be rediscovered by later readers and editors.