'Mary James' is a pseudonym for Marijane (Agnes) Meaker, who also writes under the names M.E. Kerr, M.J. Meaker, Ann Aldrich, and Vin Packer. She is probably best known as M.E. Kerr. She was born May 27, 1927 in Auburn, New York. Following graduation from college she began work at Dutton Publishing in New York. When she sold her first story, to the Ladies' Home Journal, in 1951, she quit to become a full-time free-lance writer, and never worked at a full-time job again. She has written prolifically, both fiction and non-fiction, for both adults and young adults, and has received numerous awards. Much of her young adult literature is drawn from her own experience, which she recounts with insight and humor. Probably her best and also most controversial novel is Gentlehands published in 1978, and describing a young man who discovers that his cultured grandfather was, during WWII a Nazi officer who murdered Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz.
Biographical sources: Something About the Author vols. 20, 61, 99, 111
From the guide to the Mary James papers, 1994, (University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections [clrc])
