Griffith, Mary
Entry updated 23 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1772-1846) French-born author, in US from 1776; she changed her name from Mary Corré to Mary Griffith on marrying John Griffith (1768-1815), and published as Griffith after his death. Her nonfiction studies in horticulture and general scientific topics were respected. She is of sf interest for a Utopia, Three Hundred Years Hence (1950), which originally appeared as one of the stories in Camperdown, or News from Our Neighbourhood: Being Sketches (coll 1836) as by The Author of "Our Neighbourhood", occupying a substantial part of that volume. Though the tale is conveniently cast as a dream, it may pragmatically be read as representing an extremely early use of the Sleeper-Awakes convention. The protagonist of the tale awakens 200 years hence in an automated, urban world that had once been the states of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Women are emancipated, Slavery is abolished (though at the cost of the repatriation of Blacks to an Africa they have never known), drunkards are pilloried, good hygiene is enforced, dogs are extinct, ample Transportation is fuelled by an unexplained Power Source, and Shakespeare is expurgated. It is a bluestocking world, but one whose Feminism and good sense are conveyed with a substantial force of imagination. [JC/PN]
see also: Suspended Animation.
Mary Griffith
born France: 1772
died Red Hook, New York: 1846
works
- Camperdown; Or, News from Our Neighbourhood: Being Sketches (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1836) as by The Author of "Our Neighbourhood" [coll: "Three Hundred Years Hence" occupies pages 9-92: hb/]
- Three Hundred Years Hence (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Prime Press, 1950) [reprints the story of the same name from the above: hb/]
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