One of the volunteers at the museum in which I work is doing a project involving a short story by Temple Bailey. She asked me to try to find some information on her, but I can’t. The only tidbit I’ve been able to discover is her birth and death dates-- no other biographical information.
The sum of what I know is:
Irene Temple Bailey (1885?- 7/6/1953)
Prolific author of novels and articles for women’s magazines. Her most oft-quoted piece is “A Parable on Motherhood.”
• “Temple Bailey (An Autobiography)” in The Saturday Evening Post for November 15, 1919. A short sketch.
• American National Biography. 24 volumes. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Dictionary of American Biography. Supplement 5. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977.
• Pen Names of Women Writers. From 1600 to the present. A compendium of the literary identities of 2,650 women novelists, playwrights, poets, diarists, journalists and miscellaneous writers. By Alice Kahler Marshall. Camp Hill, PA: Alice Kahler Marshall, 1985. Alphabetical Listing by Author’s Pen Name’ begins on page 95.
• The Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature. By Max J. Herzberg. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1962.
• Twentieth Century Authors. A biographical dictionary of modern literature. Edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1942.
• Twentieth Century Authors. A biographical dictionary of modern literature. First Supplement. Edited by Stanley J. Kunitz. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1955.
• Who Was Who in America. A component of Who’s Who in American History. Volume 3, 1951-1960. Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who, 1966. (WhAm 3)
• Who Was Who among North American Authors, 1921-1939. Compiled from Who’s Who among North American Authors, Volumes 1-7, 1921-1939. Two volumes. Detroit: Gale Research, 1976.
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 3: September, 1952-August, 1955. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1956. (BioIn 3)
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 4: September, 1955-August, 1958. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1960. (BioIn 4)
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 22: September, 1996-August 1997. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1997.
• *The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women writers from the Middle Ages to the present. By Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. (FemiCLE)
• *Women in World History. A biographical encyclopedia. Seventeen volumes. Waterford, CT: Yorkin Publications, 1999-2002. Use the Index in vol. 17 to locate biographies.
• American Authors and Books. 1640 to the present day. Third revised edition. By W.J. Burke and Will D. Howe. Revised by Irving Weiss and Anne Weiss. New York: Crown Publishers, 1972.
• Dictionary of Literary Pseudonyms. A selection of popular modern writers in English. Fourth edition. By Frank Atkinson. London: Library Association Publishing. Part I: Alphabetical listing by authors’ ‘Real names’ begins on page 1.
• Obituaries on File. Two volumes. Compiled by Felice Levy. New York: Facts on File, 1979.
• American Women Writers. A critical reference guide from colonial times to the present. Four volumes. Edited by Lina Mainiero. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1979-1982.
• Index to Women of the World from Ancient to Modern Times. Biographies and portraits. By Norma Olin Ireland. Westwood, MA: F.W. Faxon Co., 1970.
• Women Novelists, 1891-1920. An index to biographical and autobiographical sources. By Doris Robinson. New York: Garland Publishing, 1984.
• Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature. First edition. Edited by George Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
From Women Who Make Our Novels (1928), by Grant M. Overton:
Ah, yes – in these Web-dominated days, it’s easy to forget that on older, more obscure subjects, the best sources are still only in printed form, and can only be found using printed indexes, not Google. Though, of course, Google is working on the problem: Google Books Library Project
Lissa, if you have had trouble finding this author in refernce books, look under her pen name of Temple Bailey, besides her full name of Irene Temple Bailey. She is listed under both, depending on which source you use.
About her age, I do find Irene Bailey listed as 40 years old in the U.S. Census taken on April 15, 1910. She was single and lodging in Washington, D.C. Occupation: magazine writer. So, the 1869 year of birth seems correct.