author

Reina Melcher Marquis

b. 1881

Best known for the 1914 novel The Torch Bearer, this early-20th-century writer published fiction in magazines and moved in literary circles around New York and Atlanta. Her work feels rooted in the domestic and emotional dramas of its era.

1 Audiobook

The Torch Bearer

The Torch Bearer

by Reina Melcher Marquis

About the author

Reina Melcher Marquis was an American writer active in the early 1900s. Her best-known work is The Torch Bearer, published by D. Appleton and Company in 1914. Surviving records also show her contributing short fiction to magazines, including To-Day's Magazine.

She is often remembered in connection with writer Don Marquis, whom she married after the two met while working around Uncle Remus's Home Magazine in Atlanta. Later, the family moved to New York, placing her close to a wider literary world while she continued her own writing.

Some sources list her birth year as 1885 rather than 1881, so the exact year is not completely clear from the material I could confirm here. A clear, verifiable portrait image was not available from the sources I was able to check, so no profile image is included.