Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

Born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1860 and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, she became a popular American novelist and short story writer in the early 20th century. She is most closely associated with The Perfect Tribute, a story centered on Abraham Lincoln that became widely read and was later published as a standalone volume.

She married William Shankland Andrews in 1884, and her writing career grew alongside a busy family and public life. Her fiction often drew on American history and national themes, helping her build a broad readership well beyond literary circles.

She died in Syracuse, New York, in 1936. Her papers are preserved at Syracuse University, a reminder of a writer whose historical fiction once reached a remarkably large audience.