author
Mary M. (Mary Martha) Mears
1876–1943
An early 20th-century American novelist who also worked as a screenwriter and photographer, she moved easily between literary magazines, novels, and the young film industry. Her career has a quietly adventurous feel, stretching from magazine fiction to creative work linked with the first years of MacDowell.
1 Audiobook
The Bird in the Box
by Mary M. (Mary Martha) Mears
About the author
Mary Martha Mears was an American writer best known for fiction, with short stories appearing in magazines such as Harper's, Forum, and McClure's. Available reference pages also describe her as a screenwriter and photographer, suggesting a career that reached beyond the printed page and into other creative fields.
She published her first novel, Emma Lou—Her Book, while still quite young, and went on to write four novels in total, including The Breath of the Runners and The Bird in the Box. Film sources connect her with The Forbidden Thing (1920), showing that she took part in the expanding world of early cinema as well as prose fiction.
Mears is also remembered through her connection to MacDowell, where she and her sister, the sculptor Helen Farnsworth Mears, were among the first artists in residence in 1907. A clear portrait image could not be confirmed from the pages reviewed, so no profile image is included here.