Mary Platt Parmele

Born in Albany, New York, in 1843, she was an American historian and writer who built a reputation for making history readable and engaging. She was educated in New York, and biographical sources identify her as the daughter of Zephaniah Platt and Cornelia Jenkins Platt; her grandfather was U.S. Representative Jonas Platt.

From the 1890s onward, she contributed philosophical pieces and short stories to magazines and reviews, but she is most remembered for her historical works. Her best-known books were the concise volumes in her "Short History" series, which covered countries including France, Russia, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United States.

She died in New York in 1911. Today, her work still turns up in library catalogs and public-domain collections, a sign of the lasting reach of her clear, reader-friendly approach to history.