Myra Kelly

Myra Kelly was an Irish-born American teacher and writer whose fiction drew closely on classroom life in New York’s Lower East Side. Little Citizens collects stories about pupils, families, and the young teacher Constance Bailey, balancing comedy with attention to language, migration, misunderstanding, and neighborhood change. The collection includes “A Little Matter of Real Estate,” “The Uses of Adversity,” and “Love Among the Blackboards,” among other school-centered pieces. Kelly studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, and taught at Public School 147 around the turn of the twentieth century. Her experiences with children from immigrant households supplied settings and speech patterns for several story collections, including Little Aliens and New Faces. She also wrote the novels Rosnah and The Golden Season. Kelly’s work belongs to an era when urban school stories offered readers a close view of a rapidly changing city. Her best-known pieces remain valuable for their lively dialogue and their focus on relationships between teachers, children, and parents.