Background
May Lamberton Becker was born on August 26, 1873, in New York City, New York, United States. She was a daughter of Ellis Tinkham Lamberton and Emma Packard Lamberton (maiden name Thurston), a teacher.
critic editor journalist author
May Lamberton Becker was born on August 26, 1873, in New York City, New York, United States. She was a daughter of Ellis Tinkham Lamberton and Emma Packard Lamberton (maiden name Thurston), a teacher.
May Lamberton Becker was brought up in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her father died when she was twelve-years old.
Becker attended a private school for girls run by her mother and studied at Jersey City High School. She had a great passion for learning.
After graduating in 1889, Becker was proposed to pursue her education at Barnard College but decided on career instead.
After completing high school in Jersey City, May Lamberton Becker became a reporter for the Jersey City News. Soon, she assumed the additional duties of drama and music critic for the paper.
Soon after her marriage in the middle of the 1890s, Becker started to give lectures on music, drama, and Victorian literature for women in 1907. In 1915, she began writing The Reader's Guide column, which debuted in the New York Evening Post, where it was published until 1924. Thereafter, the popular column, which discussed books and reading, appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature (currently known as Saturday Review ) until 1933, and the New York Herald Tribune from 1933 until 1955.
Becker also served in several journalistic editorial positions. From 1924 to 1925, she was a department editor for Pictorial Review. After, she served as literary editor of American Girl magazine for a couple of years, then became book department editor for Youth's Companion. She was editor of St. Nicholas Magazine from 1930 to 1932, and editor of the Books for Young People department of the New York Herald Tribune from 1932 to 1948. At the Scholastic Magazine (currently Scholastic News), she served as book editor beginning in 1948.
During her prolific journalism career, Becker also wrote and edited several anthologies and works of literary criticism. In addition to editing several volumes of stories and tales, including the Golden Tales series from regions of North America as well as volumes of Mother Goose tales and Bible stories, she also produced material to familiarize juvenile readers with major English authors. So, she edited an illustrated version of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and wrote Introducing Charles Dickens and Presenting Miss Jane Austen to acquaint young readers with the life and works of those major figures. Adventures in Reading by Becker, aimed at a young adult audience, presented chapters and bibliographies on poetry, drama, fantasy, travel, and other genres.
The author also wrote books to guide adults in improving their children's and their own literary habits. Among these were First Adventures in Reading: Introducing Children to Books, Choosing Books for Children, A Reader's Guide Book, and Books as Windows.
Becker, who lived much of her life in her native New York City, was a member and past president of the New York Dickens Fellowship and the Town Hall Club.
May Lamberton Becker supported the United Kingdom during World War II. The income from Introducing Charles Dickens was donated to the London's Charles Dickens ambulance and to various charities.
May Lamberton Becker was fully engaged in the activity of Books Across the Sea literary movement where her daughter was a chairman.
May Lamberton Becker married a pianist and composer Gustave A. Becker in 1893. The family produced one child named Beatrice. She became a writer and scholar of typography.
May and Gustave divorced in 1911.