ANNA MARY WELLS - AUTOGRAPH 07/13/1973 - HFSID 71550

ANNA MARY WELLS
The mystery novel author, journalist, and English professor signed this card in black ink
Signature: “Anna Mary Wells / July 13, 1973” in black ink on a 3½x2¼ card. Anna Mary Wells (ca. 1906-2003) was a popular mystery writer who was predominantly active in the 1940s. She became a popular mainstream mystery writer with her first novel, A Talent for Murder (1942). The book received rave reviews and she took advantage of the publicity, publishing Murderer's Choice the next year and following them up with Sin of Angels later that decade (1948). After publishing two more crime novels (Fear of Deathand The Night of May Third, published in 1951 and 1956, respectively), she returned to the genre she worked with to earn her PhD in 1927: biography. Her dissertation focused on the life of famous poet Emily Dickinson. Years later she expanded on her studies, publishing a biography about the man responsible for Dickinson's unique poems; the book is titledDear Preceptor: The Life and Times of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1963). In 1962, along with a number of other popular mystery writers, she was selected to write a section in the original work The Quality of Murder: Three Hundred Years of True Crime (1962). She contributed to publications such as The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Her husband T.R. “Ted” Smits was also a freelance writer and author. She taught English at Douglass College, part of Rutgers University. Her most recent publication, a biography on the intertwining lives of female leaders Ms. Marks and Ms. Woolley, was published in 1978. Fine condition.