I grew up in Murfreesboro TN, which at the time of my early life was a small county seat of about 28,000 people. (Now it is a big suburb of Nashville). My mother was a dedicated member of The Craddock Club, a local “bluestocking” study club that has been meeting continuously (and still is!) since the early 1920s. The Craddock Club was named for Mary Noailles Murfree, a local small-town author-celebrity who published under the name of Charles Egbert Craddock. I was delighted to find reference to her in the Walt Whitman Collection, in a book list of the early 1900s:
Murfree, Mary N. [Ch. E. Craddock.]
Stories in the Tennessee Mountains. 12mo, Boston, 1884 … 1.25
I grew up there, left for college, never went back except for family visits-- but even now, decades later, if anyone asks where I’m from, I still say Middle Tennessee, haha.
Wow, what a great feeling it must have been to find a reference to someone/something you know about personally. Too bad Murfree had to use a male’s name for publication (and probably marketing) actions
And… to add to Josto’s point-- how interesting it is to me that the women’s study group chose the male pseudonym instead of the true female identity, who actually lived among them, for the title of their club.
