CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was an American journalist, poet, and novelist. Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, he was the son of mathematics professor Frank Morley and violinist Lillian Janet Bird. In 1900, Christopher moved with his parens to Baltimore, returning to Pennsylvania in 1906 to attend Haverford College. Upon graduating as valedictorian in 1910, he went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship to study modern history. While in England, he published The Eighth Sin (1912), a volume of poems. After three years, he moved to New York, found work as a publicist and publisher’s reader at Doubleday, and married Helen Booth Fairchild. After moving his family to Philadelphia, Morley worked as an editor for Ladies’ Home Journal and then as a reporter for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. In 1920, Morley moved one final time to Roslyn Estates in Nassau County, Long Island, commuting to the city for work as an editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. A gifted humorist, poet, and storyteller, Morley wrote over one hundred novels and collections of essays and poetry in his lifetime. Kitty Foyle (1939), a controversial novel exploring the intersection of class and marriage, was adapted into a 1940 film starring Ginger Rogers, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role.