Kerr, Sophie (1880–1965)

American novelist, short-story writer, and editor. Name variations: Mrs. Sophie Kerr Underwood. Born in Denton, Maryland, on August 23, 1880; died in 1965; daughter of Jonathan Williams Kerr and Amanda Catherine (Sisk) Kerr; Hood College, Frederick, Maryland, B.A., 1898; University of Vermont, M.A., 1901; married John D. Underwood, on September 6, 1904 (divorced 1908).

Selected works:

Love at Large (1916); The Blue Envelope (1917); The Golden Block (1918); The See-Saw (1919); Painted Meadows (1920); One Thing Is Certain (1922); Confetti (1927); Mareea-Maria (1929); Tigers Is Only Cats (1929); In for a Penny (1931); Girl Into Woman (1932); Stay Out of My Life (1933); (play, with A.S. Richardson) Big-Hearted Herbert (1934); Miss J. Looks On (1935); There's Only One (1936); Fine to Look At (1937); Adventure with Women (1938); Curtain Going Up (1940); Michael's Girl (1942).

Writer Sophie Kerr began her career in the newspaper business, spending successive years as the women's editor of the Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph and Gazette Times. She subsequently was managing editor of the Woman's Home Companion for several years. Kerr's writings—short stories, magazine serials, and novels—have been categorized as professionally executed, "but lightly skimming the surface of life." Wrote Gerald Hewes Carson: "She might tell us much about human nature as it peers out from beneath its humdrum shell of business. But she is ambitious only to amuse. One must grant that she can do that to perfection." Kerr also wrote one play, Big-Hearted Herbert, a collaborative effort with A.S. Richardson. Successfully produced in 1934, it was called "good clean fun, laid on with a steam-shovel" by one critic. Sophie Kerr, who was married and divorced from John D. Underwood, made her home in New York, but traveled widely. She entertained frequently and was known as a delightful host and a gourmet cook.