Christopher Morley was an American writer, journalist, and poet. Morley is the author of over 100 books of essays, poetry, and novels. He is best known as the author of Kitty Foyle (1939), adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie.
Christopher Morley was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His father was a mathematics professor at Haverford College. Morley also studied at Haverford College and then attended New College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship, studying modern history.
He began as a journalist, reporter, and then columnist for various publications, including The Baltimore Evening Sun and The New York Evening Post. Morley also was one of the founders and long-time edited the Saturday Review of Literature from 1924 to 1940.
Morley wrote across various genres, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His notable works include Parnassus on Wheels (1917), a light-hearted novel about a fictional traveling book-selling business, and its sequel, The Haunted Bookshop (1919).
His other well-known work is Thunder on the Left (1925), where Morley examines questions of maturity, individual growth, and human nature.
A highly gregarious man, he was the mainstay of what he dubbed the Three Hours for Lunch Club. Out of enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he was the founder of the Baker Street Irregulars. Morley wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
In 1936 he was appointed to revise and enlarge Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1937, 1948). He was one of the first judges for the Book-of-the-Month Club, serving in that position until the early 1950s.
Morley wrote essays on literary topics, humor pieces, and detective stories. He also was an avid book collector.
Christopher Morley passed on March 28, 1957, in Roslyn Heights, New York.
Photo credit: Bettmann Archive/Bettmann
