Johnston, Mary
Entry updated 25 November 2024. Tagged: Author.

(1870-1936) US author of nonfantastic novels, several of which are of significance in the history of American Feminism, most importantly Hagar (1913), whose optimistic conclusion adumbrates a more Utopian world; and of some supernatural fictions [listed below for convenience]. She is of sf interest for The Wanderers (coll of linked stories 1917), which follows through prehistory (see Prehistoric SF) and later times the intimately intertwined adventures, as enabled by their multiple shared Reincarnations, of its protagonists. The Exile (1927) complicatedly fuses fantasy and sf: in the indefinite Near Future, a great but unidentified country falls prey to a dictatorship; resisters, including the protagonist, are exiled to Eldorado Island (see Islands), which he remembers, mysteriously, from three centuries previous. [JC]
Mary Johnston
born Buchanan, Virginia: 21 November 1870
died Warm Springs, Virginia: 9 May 1936
works (selected)
- Hagar (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1913) [hb/]
- The Witch (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1914) [hb/]
- The Wanderers (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1917) [coll of linked stories: illus/hb/Willy Pogany]
- Sweet Rocket (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920) [hb/]
- The Exile (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1927) [hb/]
links
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