CRADDOCK, CHARLES EGBERT 2 ), the pen-name of MARY NOAILLES MURFREE, American author, who was born near Murfreesboro, Tenn., Jan. 24 185o. She was crip pled in childhood by paralysis, but attended school in Nashville and Philadelphia. During her summers in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, she came to know the primitive people there whom her writings portray. She contributed to Appleton's Jour nal, and, first in 1878, to the Atlantic Monthly. No one, ap parently, suspected that the author of these tales was a woman, and her identity was not disclosed until after the publication of her first volume of short stories, In the Tennessee Mountains (1884). She deals mainly with the narrow, stern life of the mountaineers, who, left behind in the advance of civilization, live amid traditions and customs and speak a dialect peculiarly their own. Her work abounds in effective descriptions of scenery. Among her other books are : Where the Battle Was Fought (1884), a novel dealing with the old aristocratic southern life; Down the Ravine (1885) and The Story of Keedon Bluffs (1887) for young people; The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains (1885) ; In the Clouds (1886) ; The Despot of Broomsedge Cove (1888) ; and His Vanished Star (1894) , novels; The Mystery of Witch Face Mountain (1895); The Phantoms of the Footbridge ; The Young Mountaineers (1897) ; The Bush Whackers (1899), short stories. Her later books, The Fair Mississippian (1908) or The Story of Dulciehurst (1914) are inferior to those written when the local colour movement was at its height. She died at Murfreesboro (Tenn.), July 31 1922.