Frances Mossiker

Frances Sanger Mossiker (April 9, 1906 – May 12, 1985) was an American writer best known for her historical biographies.

Biography Frances Mossiker was born in Dallas, Texas on April 9, 1906, the daughter of Elihu and Evelyn Beekman; her father was of the Sanger family, owners of the Texas retail chain Sanger Brothers. As she was growing up, she often visited her mother's family in France, and became fluent in French and German. She attended the Hockaday School and Forest Avenue High School and, at 15, attempted to join the circus. She enrolled at Smith College but, according to school policy, had to leave when, at 16, she eloped with her first husband, the actor Frank Beaston. Five additional biographies followed and her combination of painstaking research and lively writing style made her books best-sellers, in North America and in Europe. Her 1965 book Napoleon and Josephine, the Biography of a Marriage also won the Collins award. For her last book,Madame de Sévigné: A Life and Letters (1983), she became the first person to translate the Sévigné letters into English, and to write a book about Sévigné in English.

In 1972, Mossiker earned a Doctorate of Letters from Southern Methodist University. She established the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in English at SMU and the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. She died of heart disease in Dallas on May 12, 1985 and donated her papers to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, to Boston University, and to Smith College.