Fanny "Fan" Schneider Mailer
Norman Mailer's mother. Born in Lithuania in late December 1891 and brought to the United States as an infant in 1894, she grew up in the Schneider family's Long Branch, New Jersey hotel business, married Isaac Barnett "Barney" Mailer in Manhattan on 12 February 1922, and raised Norman and Barbara in Long Branch and Brooklyn. Dies 28 August 1985.
Born in Lithuania in late December 1891 to Rabbi Chaim Jehuda Schneider and Ida Kamrass Schneider, Fanny “Fan” Schneider was brought to the United States as an infant in 1894. She grew up in the Schneider family’s Long Branch, New Jersey hotel business, whose beach-cottage cluster at Beach and Ocean Avenues — renamed “Kingsley Court” after Norman’s birth — would anchor Mailer family summers through the 1930s.
Fan married Barney Mailer on 12 February 1922 in Manhattan. Their son Norman was born on 31 January 1923; their daughter Barbara Jane on 6 April 1927. Fan’s mother Ida died in May 1928 and her father Chaim in November of the same year; the Mailers then left the shared Long Branch household for Cortelyou Road in Flatbush, Brooklyn, moving again in January 1932 to 555 Crown Street in Crown Heights.
Fan is a central presence in Norman’s life from his birth through her death on 28 August 1985. Lennon’s 1985 Days entry records the death; the later Brooklyn Heights years of Mailer’s own life run in close parallel to his mother’s residence in the borough.
Related pages
- pre-1923 | 1923 | 1928 | 1932
- Isaac Barnett "Barney" Mailer | Barbara Jane Mailer
- Hyman "Chaim" Jehuda Schneider | Ida "Chaje" Kamrass Schneider
- Long Branch, New Jersey