Frances Mossiker

Frances Sanger Mossiker was born in Dallas in 1906. She attended The Hockaday School and went on the study French and Romance languages at Smith College, Barnard College, and the Sorbonne. Mrs. Mossiker began reviewing books for a local Dallas radio station in 1933. Her first book, The Queen's Necklace, a tale of 18th-century France, was published in 1961. Five others followed: Napoleon and Josephine, in 1964; The Affair of the Poisons, a story of Louis IV, in 1969; More Than a Queen: The Life of Josephine Bonaparte, in 1971; Pocahontas: The Life and Legend, in 1976; and Madame De Sevigne: A Life and Letters, in 1983. The New York Times said upon her death on May 9, 1975, "She wrote in a way that combined painstaking attention to detail with a lively style that made her a best-selling author on both sides of the Atlantic."