Frances Mossiker, undated

Frances (Fanny) Sanger Mossiker was born on 9 April 1906. She was a non-graduating member of Smith College, Class of 1927, where she earned Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She also studied at Barnard and the Sorbonne. She married Dallas businessman Jacob Mossiker in 1926 and settled with him in Texas. Mossiker had a life-long interest in 17th and 18th century France and wrote several biographies and works of historical fiction with that as the backdrop: The Queen's Necklace (1961), Napoleon and Josephine: A Biography of a Marriage (1964), The Affair of the Poisons (1969), More Than a Queen (1971), and Madame de Sevigne (1983). In 1961, she won two awards for The Queen's Necklace: the Carr Collins Award for best non-fiction book by a Texas author, and an award from Theta Sigma Phi, the National Fraternity for Women in Journalism. She won the Carr Collins Award again in 1964 for Napoleon and Josephine. She also published several translations. Frances Mossiker died on 9 May 1985.