author
Mary Lerner
1882–1938
A little-known American short story writer, she published a cluster of striking magazine stories in the 1910s that quickly won notice. Her best-known work, "Little Selves," was chosen for major annual short-story collections and helped secure her small but lasting place in American literary history.
1 Audiobook
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 before turning to fiction. Her writing career was brief, but between 1914 and 1919 she placed at least fourteen short stories in widely read magazines such as McCall's, Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, and The Atlantic Monthly.
Lerner is remembered especially for "Little Selves," first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1916. The story was selected for The Best American Short Stories of that year, and it was later included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, a sign of the unusually strong impression her work made despite her small output.
Very little is firmly documented about the rest of her life, and that mystery is part of her appeal. What survives is the work itself: thoughtful, finely observed stories that earned serious attention in their time and still invite rediscovery today.