Talk:Judith Merkle Riley

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uncle-abue

Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Her uncle-abue was the famous baseman Fred Merkle.

What on earth is an uncle-abue? Jsjoberg 01:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Re: uncle-abue

Her uncle-abue is the brother of her grandfather. --E-romance (talk) 12:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Wouldn't that merely be "great-uncle" ? 63.201.26.195 (talk) 20:31, 4 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

It seems a bit misleading to describe her works as simply "Romance" and "historical romance": the presence of ghosts, spirits, demons, angels and a prophetic undying head surely make the works historical fantasy. Filigree11 (talk) 02:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Expansion to cover academic career, May 2026

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I expanded the article from roughly 3 KB to 7 KB. The substantive addition is a new Academic career section documenting her 1980 monograph Management and Ideology: The Legacy of the International Scientific Management Movement (University of California Press), reviewed by Melvin Kranzberg in The American Historical Review (1982) and by Samuel Haber in The Journal of American History (1983). Both reviews are DOI-verified. Her academic work as Judith A. Merkle is independently notable and was missing from the article.

Other changes for review:

Lead rewritten per MOS:LEAD to summarize both careers (political scientist and novelist). The body distinguishes that she published academic work as Judith A. Merkle and fiction under her married name.
Biography restructured into Early life and education, Academic career, Writing career, and Personal life and death. Each novel now has a one-line description of its historical setting (Affair of the Poisons, court of Henry VIII, court of Catherine de' Medici, etc.).
Bibliography split into Academic and Fiction subsections; the Margaret of Ashbury trilogy is grouped together.
Image moved from above the lead to below the first paragraph per MOS:LAYOUT.
MOS:DEGREES: "Bachelor of Arts"/"Master of Arts"/"Doctor of Philosophy" rendered as BA / MA / PhD.
Stub tag removed (the article is now ~7 KB across five sections with multiple reliable sources).
Categories: added Category:American political scientists, Category:American women political scientists, Category:American historical novelists, Category:Women historical novelists, Category:21st-century American novelists, Category:21st-century American women writers, Category:American women novelists.

On the uncle-abue thread above: the lead and Early life section now use "great-uncle" (the original wording the IP suggested in 2009) sourced to the Los Angeles Times obituary.

On Filigree11's 2009 note about fantasy vs. romance: the article now describes the books as "historical novels" / "historical fiction" rather than "historical romance". Genre classification at this granularity needs a secondary source; if reliable critical sources discuss the fantasy elements (ghosts, prophetic head, etc.) the description can be refined.

Open to feedback. ~~~~ Sparks19923 (talk) 10:40, 11 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

A page that knows where it met you.

uncle-abue

Re: uncle-abue

Expansion to cover academic career, May 2026