Christopher Morley

for the actor, see Christopher Morley (actor)

Christopher Morley (5 May, 1890–28 March, 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet.

Biography

Christopher Morley was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania while his father was a mathematics professor at Haverford College. Morley graduated from this same school in 1910 as valedictorian. He then went to New College, Oxford for three years on a Rhodes Scholarship, studying modern history. Arriving home, he headed out to Garden City, New York, to begin his life of letters at Doubleday, where he worked as a publicist and publisher's reader. About this time he married Helen Fairchild, and they lived first in Hempstead, and then in Queens Village. Morley moved to Philadelphia where he got his start as a newspaper reporter and then columnist for various publications. In 1920, he returned to New York City and took a job writing the column The Bowling Green for the New York Evening Post.

He was one of the founders and long-time contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. A highly gregarious man, he was the mainstay of what he dubbed the "Three Hours for Lunch Club". Out of enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he became the founder of the Baker Street Irregulars and wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. In 1936 he was appointed to revise and enlarge Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1937, 1948). He was one of the first judges for the Book-of-the Month Club, serving in that position until the early 1950s.

Author of more than 100 books of essays, poetry, and novels, Morley is probably best known as the author of Kitty Foyle (1939), which was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. Other well known works include Thunder on the Left (1925), and The Haunted Bookshop (1919) and Parnassus on Wheels (1917), his two novels of a fictional bookseller.

For most of his life, he lived in Roslyn Heights, Nassau County, Long Island, commuting to the city on the Long Island Rail Road, about which he wrote affectionately. In 1961, a 98 acre park was named in his honor in Nassau County. This park preserves his studio, the "Knothole", as a point of interest, his furniture and bookcases available to the historically-interested public.

Notable works

• Parnassus on Wheels (novel, 1917)
• Shandygaff (book of essays, 1918)
• The Haunted Bookshop (novel, 1919)
• Thunder on the Left (novel, 1925)
• Off the Deep End (collection of essays, 1928, illustrated by John Alan Maxwell)
• Seacoast of Bohemia ("history of four infatuated adventurers, Morley, Cleon Throckmorton, Conrad Milliken and Harry Wagstaff Gribble, who rediscovered the Old Rialto Theatre in Hoboken, and refurnished it", 1929, illustrated by John Alan Maxwell)
• The Trojan Horse (novel, 1937)
• Kitty Foyle (novel, 1939)
• The Old Mandarin (book of poetry, 1947)

Trivia

• Morley was a close friend of Don Marquis, author of the Archy and Mehitabel stories featuring the antics and commentary of a New York cockroach and a cat.
• Morley's widow sold a collection of his personal papers and books to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin after his death.
• Morley founded the Baker Street Irregulars, dedicated to the study of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes/
• Morley edited two editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: 1937 (11th) and 1948 (12th.)
• Morley's 1939 novel, Kitty Foyle was a bit advanced for its time on the racy side. It sold over one million copies, an instant best-seller.
• Morley's brothers Felix and Frank were also Rhodes Scholars.

References

External links

• Works by or about Christopher Morley at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Christopher Morley at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Essays by Morley at Quotidiana.org
• The Baker Street Journal Writings about Sherlock Holmes
• The Baker Street Irregulars Weekend
• http://www.nassaulibrary.org/bryant/Localhist/morley.htm — Biography]