Lilian Garis

Lilian C. Garis, born Lilian C. McNamara (20 October 1873 – 19 April 1954), was an American author who wrote hundreds of books of juvenile fiction between around 1915 and the early 1940s. Garis and her husband, Howard R. Garis, were possibly the most prolific children's authors of the early 20th century.

Biography Lilian McNamara was born in 1872 in Cleveland, Ohio. and Winifred. By 1880, the family lived in Belleville, New Jersey the setting of her first book. The Newark Evening News reported that she'd submitted a poem "when a schoolgirl" and "a request to call at the office resulted in her being taken on by the local staff of which she was the youngest member."

Lilian attended private schools including Dunkirk Union School. In 1893 her poem "Peace" was featured in the New Jersey Scrapbook of Women Writers created for the World's Columbian Exposition. At this point she used an alternate name "Lillian Mack" and lives in Newark. Lillian was also a suffragette.

Lilian met Howard Garis at the Newark Evening News and the couple married in 1900. In 1951, they moved from East Orange, New Jersey to Amherst, Massachusetts.

For the Stratemeyer Syndicate Garis wrote under the pseudonym Margaret Penrose and Laura Lee Hope, with her works including some of the earliest books in the Bobbsey Twins series as well as the Dorothy Dale series. But Mrs. Garis also wrote some books under her own name.

Among her 'fan' letters Lillian Garis receives some flattering testimonials of her girl readers' interest in her stories. From a class of thirty comes a vote of twenty-five naming her as their favorite author/ Perhaps in is the element of live mystery that Mrs. Garis always builds her stories upon, or perhaps it is because the girls easily can translate her own sincere interest in themselves from the stories. At any rate, her books prosper through the changing conditions of these times, giving pleasure, satisfaction, and, incidentally, that tactful word of inspiration, so important in literature for young girls. Mrs. Garis prefers to call her books 'juvenile novels' and in them romance is never lacking. — Advertisement in Polly in the Orient, Lillian Elizabeth Roy, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1927