SHERIDAN, Miss Mattie

The Cosmopolitan, Volume 11, 1891 reported that this sitter had started her literary career when a child, and was first a contributor the Chicago Tribune. She then worked on the New York Daily Graphic and the Daily Continent. She also wrote for Appleton’s Journal in the 1870s, The New York Saturday Review in the 1880s, and Munsey’s Magazine where she wrote an article ‘Home and Home Life of Chauncey M. Depew’ (Vol. 6, 1892, pp. 408-17) which is probably how Muller-Ury came to her attention.

The Author, Vol. 3, 1891, ed. William Henry Hills, p. 34, in an article called ‘How Some Women Write’ stated that ‘Miss Mattie Sheridan, of the younger school of writers, who has done so much good work for New York papers, is another example of good literary work without system. Her copy is written in a large, bold, masculine hand.’

Miss Sheridan, who lived at 177, West 45th Street, New York, gave a tea at which four hundred people attended on Saturday February 13, 1892, which gave them the opportunity to view Muller-Ury’s portrait of her. The Home Journal, of February 17, 1892, stated that ‘Attention was accorded to Miss Sheridan’s portrait for its excellent brushwork and truthful likeness.’

On October 30, 1894 The New York Times reported that she gave a reception at the Hotel Empire for six hundred people that included Mrs. Theodore Sutro and Mrs. Collis P. Huntington.

She may have been the translator of Alexander Dumas’ novel “Le Demi Monde” that she made into a play called Deception and staged in New York in January 1893.

The sitter was the editor of Sheridan’s Men & Women started in 1903, which was an illustrated periodical of personalities, and just under 6” x 4” in size (according to The Writer, 1903, Vol. 16, p.143). In 1905 the journal was published from the Sheridan Building, 1358 Broadway, New York.