Bryna Ivens Untermeyer (August 27, 1909 - March 1985) was an American writer and editor. She was an editor for She and Seventeen, from which she also edited story collections.^[1] She also edited collections of children stories with her husband poet Louis Untermeyer and wrote a book about one of their cats from its perspective, Memoir for Mrs. Sullavan.^[2]

Untermeyer was fiction and feature editor at Seventeen until 1948.^[3][4]

She is credited as a writer for the 1941 film Murder on Lenox Avenue. Untermeyer wrote Memoir for Mrs. Sullivan about her family's cat.^[5] She edited Sorry Dear, an illustrated collection of sayings from famous authors.

Personal life

Bryna Ivens married poet Louis Untermeyer in 1948,^[6] though the legal status of the marriage was contested. Untermeyer was 62 while Ivens was 39.^[7] They edited collections of classic children's tales together. Jan Struther inscribed a poem about a cat to the couple.^[8]

Selected works

• Memoir for Mrs. Sullavan^[9] illustrated by Barry Gelle
• The Seventeen Reader edited by Bryna Ivens. Lippincott^[10]
• Legendary Animals (1954), a collection of tales featuring animals
• Stories first published in the magazine Seventeen with a wide range of theme and mood, all featuring teenagers; Fun and fancy (1958)
• Old friends and lasting favorites (1962)
• Wonder Lands (1962), a collection of folk tales
• The golden treasury of children's literature (1966), a collection of classic fairy tales
• Sorry Dear, editor, by Bryna Ivens Untermeyer. Golden Press, New York (1968)^[11]
• The Love Poems of Robert Herrick and John Donne, edited with her husband