Adelaide Mary Branch

Adelaide M. Branch (also known by her pseudonym Mary A. Douglas; July 18, 1873 – January 24, 1948) was an American educator who worked as a traveling book agent, author, stenographer, and manuscript editor. After surviving a nationwide Gilded Age tabloid sensation in December 1913, she spent her subsequent thirty-four years in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, and Washington, D.C., operating under a self-fashioned identity. As Mary A. Douglas, she published numerous commercial short stories, pulp romance serials, and feminist essays while concurrently serving as an elite technical transcriber and editor for prominent New York academics and psychical researchers.

Early life and education Adelaide Mary Branch was born on July 18, 1873, in Hartwick, Otsego County, New York, to William Henry Branch Sr. (1827–1891) and Elizabeth Bundy Branch (1837–1893).