 Sheet Music Cover (1855) |
This was the pen-name of Sara Payson Willis. Born in 1811, she was
educated at Catherine Beecher's Female Seminary in Hartford. When she began her
career as a newspaper columnist (the first woman columnist in America) in 1851,
she had been widowed and was in the process of getting a divorce from her second
husband. Soon after her writing started to appear in Boston's Olive
Branch and True Flag she was among the most widely-read and
highest-paid of all American writers. Before the end of her career in 1872, she
published over half a dozen collections of her columns and three novels,
including the autobiographical Ruth Hall (1855). It is by that novel
that she is best-known in our time, but the best-selling of her books was her
first one. Published in June 1853, Fern
Leaves sold 46,000 copies in four months (which, according to its
publishers, surpassed even the performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin), and over
70,000 copies by the end of the year. It is by excerpts from Fern Leaves that she is represented here, although other of her texts appear elsewhere in the archive. Outspoken and satirical, "Fanny Fern" made some reviewers very uncomfortable (she was, for example, the first woman to go on record praising Whitman's poetry), but she almost invariably delighted readers. She writes from within the values of mid-century sentimental culture, but usually has a mischievous glint rather than a tear in her eye. |
| Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-Folio [by "Fanny Fern"] (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1853; Buffalo: Derby, Orton and Mulligan; Cincinnati: Henry W. Derby). |
 First Edition Cover Clifton Waller Barrett Collection  Frontispiece Illustration Clifton Waller Barrett Collection  Frontispiece for Fanny Fern: A Memorial Volume (1873) Clifton Waller Barrett Collection |
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