Mabel Seeley (née Hodnefield; March 25, 1903 – June 9, 1991) was an American mystery writer.
Early life
Seeley was born March 25, 1903, in
Herman, Minnesota
Herman is a city in Grant County, Minnesota, Grant County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 437 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census.
History
Herman was platted in 1875, and named for Herman Trott, a railroad official. A po ...
.
Her family moved to
St. Paul
Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
in 1920 where she attended
Mechanic Arts High School. She graduated summa cum laude from the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
. At the university, she found inspiration for her writing career from
Mary Ellen Chase
Mary Ellen Chase (24 February 1887 – 28 July 1973) was an American educator, teacher, scholar, and author. She is regarded as one of the most important regional New England literary figures of the early twentieth century.
Early life
Chase was ...
, who was then teaching English there.
Writing career
In 1926 she married fellow student Kenneth Seeley and they moved to
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, where she wrote advertising copy for a department store. This experience she used as background of the heroine in her first book, ''The Listening House''. The Seeleys returned to
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
for medical treatment when Ken contracted tuberculosis, but they later divorced. In the late 1940s she and her son Gregory moved to
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
.
All of her books with the exception of "Eleven Came Back" were set in Minnesota, and Seeley took pains to capture her Midwestern setting, including visiting a North Shore lake at nighttime to capture an eerie feeling for her book ''The Crying Sisters''.
[
Though her work is not well known today, Seeley was popular during her lifetime, and was positively reviewed in notable publications like the ]New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
, '' Saturday Review'' and ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''.The Saturday Review of Literature
''Saturday Review'', previously ''The Saturday Review of Literature'', was an American weekly magazine established in 1924. Norman Cousins was the editor from 1940 to 1971. Under Norman Cousins, it was described as "a compendium of reportage, ess ...
'' named ''The Crying Sisters'' the best mystery of the year.[ ''The Chuckling Fingers'' won the Mystery of the Year award in 1941. In 1945 she was an early member of the ]Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is an organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City.
The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday.
It presents the Edgar Award ...
and served on its first Board of Directors.
Mystery writer Diana Killian, who counts Seeley as an early influence, notes that Seeley's protagonists were noteworthy as strong, independent women decades before modern feminism: "The typical Seeley heroine is smart, frank and strong-willed. he is
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
a working middle-class woman: a librarian, a copy-writer, a stenographer."[
In 1954, while in the East to promote her last book, ''The Whistling Shadow'', Mabel Seeley met lawyer Henry Ross. They married two years later and settled in ]New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. After her second marriage, she stopped writing; after her death, Ross told a reporter she had done so to devote more time to her marriage.[
]
Death
Seeley died on June 9, 1991.[
]
Books
*''The Listening House'' (1938)
*''The Crying Sisters'' (1939)
*''The Whispering Cup'' (1940)
*''The Chuckling Fingers'' (1941)
*''Eleven Came Back'' (1943)
*''Woman of Property'' (1947)
*''The Beckoning Door'' (1950)
*''The Stranger Beside Me'' (1951)
*''The Whistling Shadow'' (also published as ''The Blonde with the Deadly Past'') (1954)
References
External links
Mabel Seeley - A Classic Mystery Author RediscoveredPhoto of author Mabel Seeley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seeley, Mabel
1903 births
1991 deaths
University of Minnesota alumni
American mystery writers
20th-century American novelists
American women novelists
Women mystery writers
20th-century American women writers
Mechanic Arts High School alumni
Novelists from Minnesota
People from Grant County, Minnesota