At the bottom of this post you’ll find links to two separate pre-anniversary stories by Helen Moriarty that were serialized in the Gregg Writer. The shorthand conforms to the 1916 Gregg Shorthand manual.
All on Account of Miss Mooney was serialized in the Gregg Writer from August through December 1920. The story originally appeared in Extension Magazine in April 1920.
Anne Lee: Peacemaker was serialized in the Gregg Writer from December 1922 through March 1923. The story originally appeared in Extension Magazine in July 1921.
I could not find out anything about Helen Moriarty. She is a ghost on the Internet.
There is plenty of information available about Extension Magazine. It was founded in 1906 by a Catholic priest. This magazine is heavily connected to the Catholic Church and is still in publication.
I haven’t read the stories yet, so I don’t know if they have strong religious overtones. I’m not sure why Gregg chose two stories from a Catholic magazine. He was raised Presbyterian.
Here are the links to the stories:
Actually, it looks like both Miss Mooney and Anna Lee were women ahead of their times.
If the story is good and well written, where it comes from should not matter. Certainly, these ones beat the ones in Today’s Secretary. Those I sometimes wonder where they came from!
Information about Miss Helen Moriarty is scarce on the web, but it appears that she was well known during that time, contributing regularly to Catholic magazines of the era with her stories and poetry. She also wrote various chapters of a book about the history of the city of Columbus, OH (she was from that area).
I read both of the stories. The running theme involves revenge fantasies of angry stenographers who want to get back at bosses who mistreated them or undervalued them.
The Miss Mooney story is somewhat interesting. The Anne Lee story is bland.
"9 to 5."
I found another serialized story in the Gregg Writer that takes a different negative spin on female stenographers. The Job Higher up was serialized twice in the Gregg Writer magazine: Pre-Anniversary (1-25 & 2-25) and Anniversary (12-45 & 1-46).
The story first appeared in English in the obscure Remington Notes magazine. (That was a house magazine produced by the Remington Typewriter Company.)
The story takes place in an office and involves a group of female stenographers who verbally rip each other to shreds. They eventually compete for the position of stenographer to the head of the company, after the “girl” who held that job resigned to get married.