Mary Nourse

Mary Augusta Nourse (1880–1971) was an American educator and writer on China and the Far East, and a co-founder of Jinling College in Nanjing. The best-known of her several books was her first, a popular history of China titled The Four Hundred Million. Early life and education Nourse was born to Edwin Henry and Harriett Augusta Beaman Nourse of Lockport, New York on March 11, 1880. She was the sister of novelist Alice Tisdale Hobart and economist Edwin Nourse. The family later moved to Downers Grove, Illinois, in the suburbs of Chicago. Nourse attended Shimer College, which at the time was located in Mount Carroll, Illinois and served as a women's preparatory school for the University of Chicago. She graduated from Shimer in 1899 and continued to the University of Chicago, receiving her Ph.B. in 1905.