Mary Grannan

Mary Evelyn Grannan (11 February 1900 – 3 January 1975) was a Canadian children's writer and radio personality. She wrote and performed in programs for children on CBC Radio and CBC Television between 1938 and 1962. Stories broadcast on her radio and television programs Just Mary and Maggie Muggins were published in a series of popular books.

Teacher and broadcaster in Fredericton

In 1919, Mary Grannan began teaching Grade 1 at the Devon Superior School in the town of Devon, just across the Saint John River from Fredericton. She spent the rest of her 20-year teaching career at the school, where she was noted for her talents as a storyteller and as an author and producer of plays performed by her students. On the strength of Just Mary she was offered a full-time position as a junior producer at CBC Radio headquarters in Toronto. She joined the CBC in Toronto in July 1939, having taken a year's leave of absence from her teaching position, and officially resigned from teaching in 1940.

Children's book author

Prompted by fan mail requesting that the Just Mary stories be made available in book form, the CBC collaborated with the Canadian textbook publisher W.J. Gage & Company to produce Mary Grannan's first book. Entitled Just Mary and containing twelve stories, it was published in an edition of 4500 copies in January 1941. The CBC purchased 500 copies at cost for direct sale to the public, with the rest going to bookstores. A second book, Just Mary Again, appeared in late fall 1941, also published by CBC and Gage. Both books sold out quickly and were followed a third, Just Mary Stories: Combining Just Mary and Just Mary Again, which appeared in an edition of 10,000 in 1942. As a salaried CBC employee, Mary Grannan did not receive royalties from the sale of her first three books as the CBC considered that it owned the copyright of the scripts.

Mary Grannan's books were Canadian best-sellers during the 1940s and 1950s. The Just Mary titles alone had sold 120,000 copies by 1947, and by 1962 her total sales were approximately 400,000.