1889-1978
Josephine Lawrence was Newark Sunday Call Children’s and Household Editor. She was also the Newark Sunday News women’s page editor and a weekly columnist. Josephine wrote around 100 children’s books, many with the Stratemayer firm and over 30 adult books. She also contributed to the New York Times Book Review, until she retired from the News in 1970.
According to her obituary, she wrote the first children’s story ever broadcast. This was Man in the Moon which first came out in Oct 1921, and the Newark Sunday Call called the “first of its kind ever broadcasted.” Josephine wrote the stories especially for broadcasting by the Call, and the Call had to explain to their readers that they wouldn’t need to know any radio code to listen.
Author Sinclair Lewis said, “As important as her striking look into motives in middle-class America is [her] unusual power of seeing and remembering the details of daily living, each petty, yet all of them making the picture of an immortal human being.”
Josephine attended Barringer High School where “her penchant for writing and her inclination towards shyness, already marked the person she would be throughout her life.”
Her papers are at Boston University.
Bibliography
“Josephine Lawrence, author and editor” Star Ledger Feb 23, 1978
“Sunday Call Editor Honored”, Newark Sunday Call, Sept 19, 1926
C. Gerald Fraser, Josephine Lawrence, 88, Author; Novelist of Middle‐Class America, New York Times, Feb. 24, 1978.
Star Ledger, extensive coverage.
Johnson, Deidre A. Josephine Lawrence: A Writer of Her Time.
https://readseries.com/joslaw/joslaw-1ax.htm
Lawerence, Josephine, Newark News files, Newark Library
https://nap.rutgers.edu/collection.php?id=4043&type=coll&s=0
“Thousands Hear Sunday Call Radiophone Service” Newark Sunday Call Oct 9, 1921