Fanny Fern



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
CONTENTS.
  • [Preface]
  • "The Still Small Voice"
  • Look on this Picture, and then on that
  • The Widow's Trials
  • My Little Sunbeam
  • Self-Conquest
  • "Our Hatty"
  • Two in Heaven
  • "Summer Days;" or, The Young Wife's Affliction
  • Comfort for the Widow
  • Thorns for the Rose
  • Thanksgiving Story
  • Summer Friends; or, Will is Might
  • "Nil Desperandum"
  • Cecile Grey
  • Childhood's Trust
  • Elise De Vaux
  • The Wail of a Broken Heart
  • Mary Lee
  • A Talk about Babies
  • Elsie's First Trial
  • A Night-Watch with a Dead Infant
  • A Practical Blue-Stocking
  • The Little Pauper
  • Edith May; or, The Mistake of a Life-Time
  • Mabel's Soliloquy
  • How Husbands may Rule
  • Little Charley
  • The Lost and the Living
  • On a Little Child who had crept before a Looking-Glass that was left upon the Sidewalk
  • Kitty's Resolve
  • Woman
  • The Passionate Father
  • The Partial Mother
  • The Ball-Room and the Nursery
  • All's Well
  • How Woman Loves
  • A Mother's Soliloquy
  • The Invalid Wife
  • The Stray Lamb
  • Lena May; or, Darkness and Light
  • Thoughts Born of a Caress
  • A Chapter on Literary Women
  • He who has most of Heart
  • Dark Days
  • Night
  • Children's Rights
  • Sorrow's Teachings
  • "An Infidel Mother"
  • Little Charlie, the Child-Angel
  • The Cross and the Crown
  • Lilla, the Orphan
  • Observing the Sabbath
  • The Prophet's Chamber
  • Lillies of the Valley
  • Grandfather Glen
  • The Widow's Prayer
  • The Step-Mother
  • A Word to Mothers
  • The Test of Love
  • Child-Life
  • "The Old House"
  • "Seeing the Folly of it"
  • The Transplanted Lily
  • No Fiction
  • Incident at Mount Auburn
  • A Sunday Morning Soliloquy
  • Little Allie
  • The Flirt; or, The Unfaithful Lover
  • Fern Glen
  • Minnie
  • Sweet-Briar Farm
  • "The Angel-Child"
  • Not a "Model Minister"
  • "Merry Christmas!--Happy Christmas!"
  • Leta
  • The Model Step-Mother
  • A Page from a Woman's Heart; or, Female Heroism
  • Little May
  • PART II.
  • Nicodemus Ney
  • Advice to Ladies
  • The Model Widow
  • The Model Widower
  • The Tear of a Wife
  • Editors
  • Bachelor Housekeeping
  • Borrowed Light
  • Mistaken Philanthropy
  • The Model Minister
  • The Weaker Vessel
  • A Tempest in a Thimble
  • The Quiet Mr. Smith
  • Prudence Prim
  • Men's Dickeys never fit exactly
  • A Little Bunker Hill
  • Soliloquy of Rev. Mr. Parish
  • Tim Treadwell
  • A Model Lady
  • Important for Married Men
  • Mr. Clapp's Soliloquy
  • What Mrs. Smith said
  • Everybody's Vacation except Editors
  • Old Jeremiah; or, Sunny Days
  • "I can't"
  • A Chapter on Clergymen
  • Uncle Jabe
  • An Interesting Husband
  • Indulgent Husbands
  • A Fern Soliloquy
  • Aunt Hetty on Matrimony
  • Was n't you caught Napping?
  • A Lady on Money Matters
  • Mrs. Croaker
  • To the Empress Eugenia
  • Empress Eugenia's Maids of Honor
  • Fast Day
  • The Bore of the Sanctum
  • Owls kill Humming-Birds
  • "The Best of Men have their Failings"

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