Her relationships with M. Carey Thomas and Alfred Hodder were fictionalized in Gertrude Stein's short novel Fernhurst (1905).

[1] Gwinn was the youngest founding member of the "Friday Night Club", a women's study group in Baltimore, together with Mary Elizabeth Garrett, Julia Rebecca Rogers, Bessie Tabor King, and M. Carey Thomas.

[4] Gwinn taught English literature at Bryn Mawr College, and worked on a translation of Beowulf, until she married a male colleague, writer Alfred Hodder, and moved to New York City.

[9] The romantic entanglements of Thomas, Gwinn, Mary Elizabeth Garrett and the Hodders are fictionalized in Gertrude Stein's short novel Fernhurst (1905).

[10][11] The Mary Mackall Gwinn Hodder Fund at Princeton University supports graduate students in the arts.