Major Works
- Chaucer, a Forerunner of the English Renaissance (1954)
- In the Pink (1950)
- Smile, Please (1948)
Biography of Mildred Spurrier Topp
Mildred Spurrier Topp was born in Mason County, Illinois, on her grandfather’s farm on January 5, 1897 and lived there for sixteen months before moving with her family to Tennessee. Her father was Frank Spurrier and her mother was Lillian White Spurrier. After her Topp’s father died, her widowed mother opened a photo studio in 1907 in Greenwood, Mississippi, when Topp was nine. Topp grew up there and lived in Greenwood the rest of her life.
Mildred Topp graduated from Mississippi State College for Women (now known as the W) in 1917 and became president of the alumni association from 1925 to 1927. She obtained a master’s degree from the University of Mississippi. From 1932 to 1936 she was a member of the Mississippi State legislature, and during World War II, she was employed by the United States Service Organization, more commonly known as the USO.
Topp married a Greenwood cotton broker named Robert Graham Topp. She was a legislator, civic leader, an author of two best-selling works that that were semi-autobiographical, and the mother of two children (Florence Barbara Topp Barnes in 1922 and Robert Graham Topp in 1924). Topp spent four years in the Mississippi state legislature (Mississippi House of Representatives, 1932-1935, representing Leflore County) before becoming an author. Her first book Smile Please was written in three weeks and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1948. Her second memoir In the Pink was published in 1950. Her stories were humorous ones of the Mississippi Delta.
In 1950 Topp was the featured speaker at The Southern Literary Festival held at Mississippi State College (now University). She taught English at the University of Mississippi, but she was the writer in residence at Mississippi State College for Women (now the W) in 1950. The Chicago Tribune reviewer Marge Lyon described Topp in 1950 as “an able chronicler of her life and times.”
Mildred Topp died in Greenwood in 1963 at the age of 66. The Life and Writings of Mildred Spurrier Topp by Melanie Topp was published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1981. Melanie Topp, the granddaughter of Mildred Topp, received the Smith Scholarship for her outstanding thesis work on a biography of her grandmother, the Mississippi legislator and humorist.
Related Websites and Bibliography
- Neshoba Democrat article by Ovid Vickers (2007) about Topp
- Kirkus Review of In the Pink, 1950
- In Literacy in the United States, a comment about Lillian Spurrier, the mother of Mildred, in 1904.
- Find a Grave page for Topp
- All the Drama, Gallantry, and Comedy of a Small Town, a review of In the Pink, reviewed by Marge Lyon in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 17, 1950.
- Romi Topp, born in Germany, presented a humorous reading called Campaign Reminiscenses based on biographical information about her mother-in-law Mildred Spurrier Topp, 1981.