Sidney McCall

{{about|Mary McNeill, American writer|Mary McNeill, Scottish doctor and suffragist|Mary McNeill (doctor)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Sidney McCall

| birth_name = Mary McNeill

| birth_date = {{birth date|1865|3|8}}

| birth_place = Wilcox County, Alabama, C.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1954|1|11|1865|3|8}}

| death_place = Montrose, Alabama, U.S.

| occupation = Novelist

| nationality = American

| image = SidneyMcCall.jpg

| caption = Sidney McCall, from a 1907 publication

}}

Sidney McCall (March 8, 1865{{spnd}}January 11, 1954), born Mary McNeill, later Mary McNeil Fenollosa, was an American novelist and poet. Several of her novels were adapted into films.

Biography

McCall was born Mary McNeill (later dropping one of the l's) in Wilcox County, Alabama, to William Stoddard McNeill, a Confederate Army lieutenant from Mobile, Alabama, and Laura Sibley. McCall was the oldest of five children.{{cn|date=January 2025}}

At the age of 18 she married Ludolph Chester who died two years later, leaving her with an infant child. She received a proposal of marriage from W. Ledyard Scott, a former suitor then serving as a professor of English and Latin at Zoshikwan College in Kagoshima, Japan. After sailing to Tokyo, she married Scott in 1890. However, the marriage was not a happy one and in 1892, she divorced Scott and returned to the United States, now with two children.{{cn|date=January 2025}}

In 1895 while working at the Asian art division of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, she became an assistant to Ernest Fenollosa, a renowned American expert on Japanese art and culture. The two became romantically involved, and Fenollosa divorced his first wife, causing a social scandal in Boston. Forced to leave his post at the museum, Fenollosa moved with Mary to New York, but the couple returned to Japan in 1897 following a long honeymoon cruise.{{Cite web |date=November 1994 |editor-last=Murakata |editor-first=Akiko |title=Mary Fenellosa's "Honeymoon" Journals to Japan: (2) French and Italian Interludes |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39264081.pdf |access-date=July 15, 2023 |website=core.ac.uk / 39264081}}

Selected works

Out of the Nest: A Flight of Verses (1899) poetry, under her own name
Truth Dexter (1901) novel, as Sidney McCall
Hiroshige, the Artist of Mist, Snow and Rain (1901) essay, under her own name
The Breath of the Gods : A Japanese Romance of To-day (1905), as Sidney McCall
The Dragon Painter (1906) under her own name
Red Horse Hill (1909) novel, as Sidney McCall
Foreword to Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design (1912) by Ernest Fenollosa^*
Blossoms from a Japanese Garden: A Book of Child-Verses (1913) poetry, under her own name
The Strange Woman (1914) novel, as Sidney McCall
Ariadne of Allan Water (1914) novel, as Sidney McCall
The Stirrup Latch (1915) novel, as Sidney McCall
Sunshine Beggars (1918) novel, as Sidney McCall
Christopher Laird (1919) novel, as Sidney McCall

Mary Fenollosa was also responsible for the posthumous completion, checking and publication of her late husband's work Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art.[https://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/?p=1200 FENOLLOSA, MARY McNEIL, 1865-1954], lib.ua.edu. Retrieved 23 January 2022.

Films

The Breath of the Gods is based on her novel of the same name. The Eternal Mother, a lost 1917 silent film, is based on her Red Horse Hill. The Dragon Painter (1919) is based on her novel The Dragon Painter.{{cite news|last1=Ikenberg|first1=Tamara|title=Southern Literary Trail celebrates Mobile writer Mary McNeil Fenollosa and her Japanese influences|url=https://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/02/mobile_writer_mary_mcneil_feno.html|accessdate=13 May 2018|work=The Birmingham News|date=14 February 2013}}

File:Sidnay McCall--The breath of gods.djvu

Sidney McCall

Biography

Selected works

Films

References

Further reading