Mich langeweilt's, denn kaum ist's abgetan,
So fangen sic von vorne wieder an.
GOETHE: Faust, Part II, lines 3273-74

May Agnes Earlie was born in Portland, St. John, New Brunswick, November 15, 1840, and after she was seventeen wrote many novels for the New York Mercury and the Boston Pilot under the name "Cousin May Carleton." After her marriage, in 1865, to John W. Fleming, a civil engineer of Brooklyn, New York, she removed to that city and thereafter wrote under her own name. The popularity of her earlier novels induced the publishers of Saturday Night, a weekly family story paper, to enter into a contract with her under which she was to write exclusively for them at fifty dollars an installment or about $850 a story. In 1871, she left Saturday Night, and thereafter wrote exclusively for Street & Smith's New York Weekly, producing each year at least one story which was first published as a serial and later in book form. She died in Brooklyn, after a long illness, on March 24, 1880, leaving three sons and one daughter.

Pearson⁽¹⁾ makes the statement that "Madge Wylde," whose author was given as the author of "Clifton" and "Pride and Passion," was written by May Agnes Fleming, probably basing his opinion on the fact that Mrs. Fleming wrote a novel entitled "Pride and Passion." For a discussion of the reason for rejecting Mrs. Fleming as the author of "Madge Wylde," see under the name Arthur Townley.

REFERENCES: The American Bookseller, IX, 1880, 267; Allibone, Supplement, I; New York Weekly, May 4, 1875; Dramatic Magazine, May, 1880, 84; Journalist, VIII, September 22, 1888, 2; William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms, New York, 1886, 50, 428; Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography, Chicago, 1898, 366; Saturday Journal, V, No. 246, November 28, 1874..

Starr's Fifteen Cent Illustrated Novels. Nos. 1, 7
Twenty-five Cent Novels. Nos. 1,3, 4
Saturday Journal. Nos. 87, 243, 257, 269, 290, 327
Cheap Edition of Popular Authors. Nos. 1, 4, 6, 10, 12
Girls of Today. No. 15

Notes

1	Edmund Pearson, Dime Novels, Boston, 1929, 29.