Mary Tappan Wright

Mary Tappan Wright (December 14, 1851 – August 25, 1916) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her acute characterizations and depictions of academic life. She was the wife of classical scholar John Henry Wright and the mother of legal scholar and utopian novelist Austin Tappan Wright and geographer John Kirtland Wright. or December 18 of the same year, the daughter of Eli Todd Tappan, president of Kenyon College, and Lydia (McDowell) Tappan. and dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The couple had three children, Elizabeth Tappan Wright (who died young), Austin Tappan Wright, and John Kirtland Wright. Her husband died November 25, 1908, She was survived by her two sons.

Career

Works Wright and her husband are said to have "worked together on their literary activities." None of her other short stories were gathered into book form in her lifetime.

Much of her fiction dealt with American university life, often set in the fictional college town she called Dulwich in her short stories and The Test, and Great Dulwich in her other novels, which combines elements of both Kenyon College and Harvard University. Her novels are all set in college towns, the third and fourth in Dulwich itself (the first and second also mention it peripherally). Her first novel, Aliens (1902), attracted much attention when it appeared for its portrait of contemporary northerners in the racially tense Southern town of Tallawara. The next, The Test (1904), the story of a wronged young woman, received mixed reviews for what some perceived as its unpleasant subject matter and unsympathetic characters, though it was generally praised as well written. The Tower (1906) was described as "a love story placed against the life of a college community taken from the faculty side and told with deep understanding and the most delicate art" and The Charioteers (1912) as "a story of the social life and environment of college professors and their families." Close to half of her short pieces appeared in Scribner's Magazine; others appeared in The Youth's Companion, Christian Union and its successor The Outlook, The Independent, Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly, and an anthology of works by various authors. She also contributed a book review to the North American Review.

All of Wright's novels are currently available in e-editions on Book Search. Aliens was reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, in June 2007; The Tower was reprinted by Kessinger in December 2008. Wright's previously uncollected short stories were issued in new collections by Fleabonnet Press from December 2007-November 2008.

Critical reception In her writing Wright was praised as having "a keen sense of humor, good descriptive powers, a good working knowledge of human nature, an effective style" and the ability to "tell a story well." An early commonplace book from 1870 to 1877, containing mostly poetry, is in the Stone-Wright family papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.