Sylvia Wright

Notes:

As a San Francisco newspaper columnist, she coined the word "mondegreen."

"Sylvia Wright, a Writer and Harpers Ex-Editor," in The New York Times, 13 May 1981:

Sylvia Wright, a freelance writer who frequently and humorously commented in national magazines on trends in modern living, died of cancer Saturday at her home in Cambridge, Mass. She was 64 years old.

Miss Wright was also a former editor of Harpers Bazaar. A collection of her magazine articles, ''Get Away From Me With Those Christmas Gifts,'' was published by McGraw-Hill in 1957. She was also the author of a novel, ''A Shark Infested Rice Pudding.''

After her graduation from Bryn Mawr College, Miss Wright edited and prepared for publication ''Islandia,'' a Utopian novel about an imaginary country written by her father, the late Austin Tappen [sic] Wright, who was a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. The novel, which has been a steady seller, was published in 1942, reissued in 1958. It is currently published by Arno Press Inc. and the New American Library.

At her death, Miss Wright was writing a biography of her great-aunt, Melusina Fay Peirce, an early feminist and first wife of the American physicist, mathematician and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.

Miss Wright is survived by her husband, Paul J. Mitarachi; a son, John; a sister, Phyllis King of Manhattan; and two brothers, Benjamin and William Wright.