Theodora McCormick Du Bois

Theodora McCormick Du Bois (September 14, 1890 – February 1, 1986) was an American writer of genre fiction, including mysteries, children's literature, historical romances, fantasy and science fiction.

Theodora Du Bois
BornTheodora Brenton Eliot McCormick
14th September 1890
Brooklyn, New York
Died1st February 1986
NationalityUnited States of America

Early life

Theodora Brenton Eliot McCormick was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Eliot McCormick, a writer and editor, and Laura Case Brenton McCormick. She was raised by her mother and stepfather, Charles MacDonald, after her father's death in 1891.[1] She attended the Barnard School for Girls in Manhattan, and the Halsted School in Yonkers. She was a student in the Dartmouth Summer School for Drama in 1916.[2]

Career

Theodora McCormick Du Bois was a prolific author of mystery novels as "Theodora Du Bois", and of historical romances as "Theodora McCormick".[3][4] "Fresh as football weather and as up to date as Radio City, this story has a verve seldom found in the usual run of boarding-house stories," commented the New York Times reviewer Ellen Lewis Buell of McCormick's juvenile novel, Diana's Feathers (1935).[5]

Her fantasy and science fiction novels included The Devil's Spoon (1930), Murder Strikes an Atomic Unit (1946), Solution T-25 (1951) and Sarah Hall's Sea God (1952).[6][7]

Theodora McCormick also co-wrote a book, Amateur and Educational Dramatics (1917), with Evelyne Hilliard and Kate Oglebay.[8] She published short fiction too, beginning with "Thursday and the King and Queen" (Woman's Home Companion, 1920), and including "Devils and Four Gold Cups" (The Century Magazine, 1921), "Eblis" (Harper's, 1926), "Circe" (The Century Magazine, 1927), "King Solomon or the Iceman" (The Century Magazine, 1927), "A Pirate in the Linen Closet" (The Century Magazine, 1927), "Martyrs in the Ice-Box" (The Century Magazine, 1928).

About half of Du Bois's books featured the characters Jeffrey McNeill, a forensic scientist, and his wife Anne McNeill, who narrates their mystery-solving adventures. Her unflattering depiction of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in Seeing Red (1954) caused her publisher, Doubleday, to stop publishing her books.[2][7]

Selected works
  • The Devil's Spoon (1930)
  • Diana's Feathers (1935)
  • Armed with a New Terror (1936)
  • Death Wears a White Coat (1938)
  • Death Tears a Comic Strip (1939)
  • Death Dines Out (1939)
  • Death Comes to Tea (1940)
  • Death is Late to Lunch (1941)
  • The McNeills Chase a Ghost (1941)
  • The Body Goes Round and Round (1942)
  • The Wild Duck Murders (1943)
  • Banjo the Crow (1943)
  • The Case of the Perfumed Mouse (1944)
  • Death Sails in a High Wind (1945)
  • Murder Strikes an Atomic Unit (1946)
  • The Footsteps (1947)
  • The Devil and Destiny (1948)
  • The Face of Hate (1948)
  • Rogue's Coat (1949)
  • Its Raining Violence (1949)
  • High Tension (1950)
  • We Merrily Put to Sea (1950)
  • Solution T-25 (1951)
  • Fowl Play (1951)
  • The Cavalier’s Corpse (1952)
  • Sarah Hall's Sea God (1952)
  • Freedom’s Way (1953)
  • The Listener (1953)
  • Seeing Red (1954)
  • The Emerald Crown (1955)
  • The Love of Fingin O’Lea (1957)
  • Rich Boy-Poor Boy (1961)
  • Captive of Rome (1962)
  • Tiger Burning Bright (1964)
  • Shannon Terror (1964)
  • Dangerous Rescue (1964)
  • The Late Bride (1964)
  • The High King’s Daughter (1965)

Personal life

Theodora McCormick married engineer Delafield Du Bois in 1918.[9] His grandmother was sculptor and philanthropist Mary Ann Delafield DuBois. They had two children, Theodora (born 1919) and Eliot (born 1922). Her husband worked on the Manhattan Project; during World War II, the couple organized a committee at Yale University to assist displaced academics from Cambridge and Oxford, and their families. She was widowed when he died in 1965.[10][11] She died in 1986, aged 95 years. Her papers are held by the Archives and Special Collections department, College of Staten Island.[12]

gollark: No, 1st gen is 14nm and 2nd gen is 12nm.
gollark: The chipsets are still not 7nm, right? As well as the 1st/2nd gen ones they still seem to sell (they're available very cheaply, at least) and some mobile CPUs.
gollark: They used (still use, I think?) Global Foundries for 12nm/14nm parts.
gollark: Intel, I mean.
gollark: It's been claimed that they were too aggressive, that they tried to do stuff without waiting for EUV technology to come along, that they just went down the wrong development paths, and probably a lot of otherr things.

References
  1. "In re McCormick et al." The New York Supplement (January 1898).
  2. Authors, Detective Book Club.
  3. Henry Cavendish, "Where the Shannon Flows" New York Times (April 3, 1955): BR28. via ProQuest
  4. Jay Walz, "The Road to Liberty" New York Times (August 2, 1953): BR12. via ProQuest
  5. Ellen Lewis Buell, "Diana's Feathers" New York Times (November 24, 1935): BR10. via ProQuest
  6. Eric Leif Davin, Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (Lexington Books 2006): 380. ISBN 9780739112663
  7. "Theodora Du Bois" The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2018).
  8. Evelyne Hilliard, Theodora McCormick, Kate Oglebay, Amateur and Educational Dramatics (Macmillan 1917).
  9. "Alumni Notes" Harvard Alumni Bulletin (May 30, 1918): 679.
  10. "Delafield DuBois, Yale Ex-Professor" New York Times (January 8, 1965): 29. via ProQuest
  11. "Delafield Dubois Dies, Developed Metabolism Test" Hartford Courant (January 8, 1965): 4. via Newspapers.com
  12. Collections Overview, Archives and Special Collections, CSI Library.
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