Fanny Fern
Encyclopedia
Fanny Fern, born Sara Willis (July 9, 1811 – October 10, 1872), was an American writer and the first woman to have a regular newspaper column. She was also a humorist, novelist, and author of children's stories in the 1850s-1870s. Fern's great popularity has been attributed to her conversational style and sense of what mattered to her mostly middle-class female readers. By 1855, Fern was the highest-paid columnist in the United States, commanding $100 per week for her New York Ledger
column.
A collection of her columns published in 1853 sold 70,000 copies in its first year. Her best-known work, the fictional autobiography Ruth Hall
(1854), has become a popular subject among feminist literary scholars.
, to newspaper owner Nathaniel Willis
and Hannah Parker; she was the fifth of nine children. Her older brother Nathaniel Parker Willis
became a notable journalist
and magazine owner. Her younger brother Richard Storrs Willis became a musician and music journalist, known for writing the melody for "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear". Her other siblings were Lucy Douglas (born 1804), Louisa Harris (1807), Julia Dean (1809), Mary Perry (1813), Edward Payson (1816), and Ellen Holmes Willis (1821).
Inspired by Reverend Edward Payson
of Portland's Second Congregational Church, her father intended to name his fifth child after the minister. When the child was born a girl, he named her after Payson's mother, Grata Payson. The reverend urged the Willises to reconsider, noting that his mother had never liked the name. Willis' surname was to change often in her life, throughout three marriages and the adoption of her chosen pen name "Fanny Fern". She decided on the pen name because it reminded her of childhood memories of her mother's picking ferns. Feeling that this chosen name was a better fit, she used it also in her personal life; eventually most of her friends and family called her "Fanny."
Willis attended Catharine Beecher
's boarding school in Hartford, Connecticut
. Beecher later described her as one of her "worst-behaved girls" (adding that she also "loved her the best".) Here the girl had her first taste of literary success when her compositions were published in the local newspaper. She also attended the Saugus Female Seminary http://books.google.com/books?id=xjwBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143&dq=Fanny+Fern&as_brr=1#PPA141,M1. After returning home, Willis wrote and edited articles for her father's Christian newspapers, The Puritan Recorder and The Youth's Companion.
(meningitis); soon afterward, her husband Charles succumbed to typhoid fever
.
Willis was left nearly destitute. With little help from either her father or her in-laws – and none from her brother N.P. Willis – she struggled to make ends meet for her surviving young daughters. Her father persuaded her to remarry.
Willis published her first article, "The Governess", in November 1851 in the new Boston newspaper Olive Branch, followed by some short satirical pieces there and in True Flag
; soon after she regularly began using the pen name "Fanny Fern" for all her articles. In 1852, on her own with two daughters to support, she began writing in earnest. She sent samples of her work under her own name to her brother Nathaniel, by then a magazine owner, but he refused them and said her writing was not marketable outside Boston. He was proved wrong, as newspapers and periodicals in New York and elsewhere began printing Fanny Fern's "witty and irreverent columns".
In the summer of 1852, Fern was hired by the publisher Oliver Dyer
at twice her salary to publish a regular column exclusively in his New York newspaper Musical World and Times; she was the first woman to have a regular column. The next year, Dyer helped her find a publisher for her first two books: Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio (1853), a selection of her more sentimental columns, and Little Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends (1853), a children's book. She had to reveal her legal name to the publishers. As it was then still Farrington and disagreeable to her, she tried to keep her name secret. The former book sold 70,000 copies in its first year, "a phenomenal figure for the time."
, a biographer and historian who edited Home Journal
, the magazine owned by Fern's brother Nathaniel (known as N.P. Willis), was impressed by Fern's work. He published her columns and invited the author to New York City. When her brother discovered this, he forbade Parton from publishing any more of Fern's work. Instead Parton resigned as editor of the magazine in protest.
Fern's first book, Fern Leaves (1853), was a best seller. It sold 46,000 copies in the first four months, and over 70,000 copies the first year. She received ten cents a copy in royalties, enough for her to buy a house in Brooklyn
and live comfortably. Three years into her career, in 1855 she was earning $100 a week for her column in the New York Ledger, making her the highest-paid columnist in the United States. Her first regular column appeared on January 5, 1856, and would run weekly, without exception, until October 12, 1872, when the last edition was printed two days after her death.
Fern wrote two novels. Her first, Ruth Hall (1854), was based on her life - the years of happiness with Eldredge, the poverty she endured after he died and lack of help from male relatives, and her struggle to achieve financial independence as a journalist. Most of the characters are thinly veiled versions of people in her world. She took revenge by her unflattering portrayals of several who had treated her uncharitably when she most needed help, including her father, her in-laws, her brother N.P. Willis, and two newspaper editors. When Fern's identity was revealed shortly after the novel's publication, some critics believed it scandalous that she had attacked her own relatives; they decried her lack of filial piety and her want of "womanly gentleness" in such characterizations. At the same time, the book also garnered positive attention. The author Nathaniel Hawthorne
, who had earlier complained about the "damned mob of scribbling women", wrote to his publisher in early 1855 in praise of the novel. He said he "enjoyed it a great deal. The woman writes as if the devil was in her, and that is the only condition in which a woman ever writes anything worth reading."
Wounded by the criticism and ambivalent about the wide publicity she stirred up, Fern tried to reduce the autobiographical elements in her second novel, Rose Clark. But while it features a conventionally sweet and gentle heroine, a secondary character makes a poor marriage of convenience
, an act which Fern had regretted in her own life.
Fern's writing continued to attract attention. In her Ledger column of May 10, 1856, she defended the poet Walt Whitman
in a favorable review of his controversial book Leaves of Grass. She noted Whitman's fearless individualism and self-reliance, as well as his honest and "undraped" portrayal of sex and the human body. Criticized for her admiration, she continued to champion literature that was ahead of its time. It has been suggested that Whitman imitated her Fern Leaves in his choice of cover art for the first edition.
In 1859, Fern bought a brownstone in Manhattan
at what is now 303 East Eighteenth Street near Second Avenue; she and Parton lived in this house for the next 13 years until her death. Fern continued as a regular columnist for the Ledger for the remainder of her life. She was a suffrage
supporter, and in 1868 she co-founded Sorosis
, New York City's pioneer club for women writers and artists, formed after women were excluded from hearing the author Charles Dickens
at the all-male New York Press Club
dinner in his honor.
Fern dealt with cancer
for six years and died October 10, 1872. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
next to her first husband. Her gravestone was inscribed simply "Fanny Fern." After her death, her widower James Parton published Fanny Fern: A Memorial Volume (1874).
Column collections
Novels
Children's books
, the woman's right to her children in a divorce, unfaithful husbands, social customs that restricted women's freedom, and sometimes just having a bad day.
Critics of "women's literature" considered some of these strengths to be weaknesses. They attacked her conversational style as unprofessional, feminine, and too spontaneous. Many male critics labeled her as "sentimental." This has led to counter-criticism about what exactly "sentimental" writing is, and why it is considered bad. The criticism showed women's lower status in society almost as well as Fern did in her work—who decides the standards by which literature is judged, and who does the judging? Nathaniel Hawthorne
praised her as an exception to the "damned mob of scribbling women", who wrote "as if the devil was in her". Fern was straightforward when she wrote of subjects such as men's economic and social victimization of women.
New York Ledger
New York Ledger was a weekly story paper published in New York City. It was established in 1856 by Robert E. Bonner. Date of last issue was 1898....
column.
A collection of her columns published in 1853 sold 70,000 copies in its first year. Her best-known work, the fictional autobiography Ruth Hall
Ruth Hall
Ruth Hall: a Domestic Tale of the Present Time is a roman à clef by Fanny Fern , a popular 19th-century newspaper writer. Following on her meteoric rise to fame as a columnist, she signed a contract in February 1854 to write a full-length novel...
(1854), has become a popular subject among feminist literary scholars.
Early life
Sarah Payson Willis was born in Portland, MainePortland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
, to newspaper owner Nathaniel Willis
Nathaniel Willis (1780-1870)
Nathaniel Willis was an editor and publisher in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. He established the Eastern Argus and the Boston Recorder newspapers, and The Youth's Companion magazine.-Biography:...
and Hannah Parker; she was the fifth of nine children. Her older brother Nathaniel Parker Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis , also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former...
became a notable journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and magazine owner. Her younger brother Richard Storrs Willis became a musician and music journalist, known for writing the melody for "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear". Her other siblings were Lucy Douglas (born 1804), Louisa Harris (1807), Julia Dean (1809), Mary Perry (1813), Edward Payson (1816), and Ellen Holmes Willis (1821).
Inspired by Reverend Edward Payson
Edward Payson
Edward Payson , American Congregational preacher, was born on 25 July 1783 at Rindge, New Hampshire, where his father, Seth Payson , was pastor of the Congregational Church. His uncle, Phillips Payson , pastor of a church in Chelsea, Massachusetts, was a physicist and astronomer...
of Portland's Second Congregational Church, her father intended to name his fifth child after the minister. When the child was born a girl, he named her after Payson's mother, Grata Payson. The reverend urged the Willises to reconsider, noting that his mother had never liked the name. Willis' surname was to change often in her life, throughout three marriages and the adoption of her chosen pen name "Fanny Fern". She decided on the pen name because it reminded her of childhood memories of her mother's picking ferns. Feeling that this chosen name was a better fit, she used it also in her personal life; eventually most of her friends and family called her "Fanny."
Willis attended Catharine Beecher
Catharine Beecher
Catharine Esther Beecher was an American educator known for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of kindergarten into children's education....
's boarding school in Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
. Beecher later described her as one of her "worst-behaved girls" (adding that she also "loved her the best".) Here the girl had her first taste of literary success when her compositions were published in the local newspaper. She also attended the Saugus Female Seminary http://books.google.com/books?id=xjwBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143&dq=Fanny+Fern&as_brr=1#PPA141,M1. After returning home, Willis wrote and edited articles for her father's Christian newspapers, The Puritan Recorder and The Youth's Companion.
Children
In 1837 she married Charles Harrington Eldredge, a banker, and they had three daughters: Mary Stace (1838), Grace Harrington (1841), and Ellen Willis (1844). Her mother and younger sister Ellen both died early in 1844; in 1845 her eldest daughter Mary died of brain feverMeningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
(meningitis); soon afterward, her husband Charles succumbed to typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
.
Willis was left nearly destitute. With little help from either her father or her in-laws – and none from her brother N.P. Willis – she struggled to make ends meet for her surviving young daughters. Her father persuaded her to remarry.
Writing in earnest
In 1849 the young widow married Samuel P. Farrington, a merchant. The marriage was a mistake. Farrington was so intensely jealous that in 1851 Willis left him, scandalizing her family, and they divorced two years later.Willis published her first article, "The Governess", in November 1851 in the new Boston newspaper Olive Branch, followed by some short satirical pieces there and in True Flag
Boston True Flag
The Boston True Flag or True Flag was a weekly fiction periodical published in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. Contributors included Francis A. Corey, Susan E. Dickinson, Fanny Fern, Louise Chandler Moulton, Oliver Optic, and John Townsend Trowbridge. Publishers William U. Moulton,...
; soon after she regularly began using the pen name "Fanny Fern" for all her articles. In 1852, on her own with two daughters to support, she began writing in earnest. She sent samples of her work under her own name to her brother Nathaniel, by then a magazine owner, but he refused them and said her writing was not marketable outside Boston. He was proved wrong, as newspapers and periodicals in New York and elsewhere began printing Fanny Fern's "witty and irreverent columns".
In the summer of 1852, Fern was hired by the publisher Oliver Dyer
Oliver Dyer
Oliver Dyer was an American journalist, author, teacher, lawyer and stenographer. A pioneer in phonography, he developed his own shorthand system which was the first to be adopted for use in the United States...
at twice her salary to publish a regular column exclusively in his New York newspaper Musical World and Times; she was the first woman to have a regular column. The next year, Dyer helped her find a publisher for her first two books: Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio (1853), a selection of her more sentimental columns, and Little Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends (1853), a children's book. She had to reveal her legal name to the publishers. As it was then still Farrington and disagreeable to her, she tried to keep her name secret. The former book sold 70,000 copies in its first year, "a phenomenal figure for the time."
Highest-paid columnist
James PartonJames Parton
James Parton was an England-born American biographer.-Biography:Parton was born in Canterbury, England in 1822. He was taken to the United States when he was five years old, studied in New York City and White Plains, New York, and was a schoolmaster in Philadelphia and then in New York...
, a biographer and historian who edited Home Journal
Town & Country (magazine)
Town & Country, formerly the Home Journal and The National Press, is a monthly American lifestyle magazine. It is the oldest continually published general interest magazine in the United States.-Early history:...
, the magazine owned by Fern's brother Nathaniel (known as N.P. Willis), was impressed by Fern's work. He published her columns and invited the author to New York City. When her brother discovered this, he forbade Parton from publishing any more of Fern's work. Instead Parton resigned as editor of the magazine in protest.
Fern's first book, Fern Leaves (1853), was a best seller. It sold 46,000 copies in the first four months, and over 70,000 copies the first year. She received ten cents a copy in royalties, enough for her to buy a house in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
and live comfortably. Three years into her career, in 1855 she was earning $100 a week for her column in the New York Ledger, making her the highest-paid columnist in the United States. Her first regular column appeared on January 5, 1856, and would run weekly, without exception, until October 12, 1872, when the last edition was printed two days after her death.
Fern wrote two novels. Her first, Ruth Hall (1854), was based on her life - the years of happiness with Eldredge, the poverty she endured after he died and lack of help from male relatives, and her struggle to achieve financial independence as a journalist. Most of the characters are thinly veiled versions of people in her world. She took revenge by her unflattering portrayals of several who had treated her uncharitably when she most needed help, including her father, her in-laws, her brother N.P. Willis, and two newspaper editors. When Fern's identity was revealed shortly after the novel's publication, some critics believed it scandalous that she had attacked her own relatives; they decried her lack of filial piety and her want of "womanly gentleness" in such characterizations. At the same time, the book also garnered positive attention. The author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, who had earlier complained about the "damned mob of scribbling women", wrote to his publisher in early 1855 in praise of the novel. He said he "enjoyed it a great deal. The woman writes as if the devil was in her, and that is the only condition in which a woman ever writes anything worth reading."
Wounded by the criticism and ambivalent about the wide publicity she stirred up, Fern tried to reduce the autobiographical elements in her second novel, Rose Clark. But while it features a conventionally sweet and gentle heroine, a secondary character makes a poor marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family, or love. Instead, such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. The phrase is a calque of - a marriage of...
, an act which Fern had regretted in her own life.
Fern's writing continued to attract attention. In her Ledger column of May 10, 1856, she defended the poet Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
in a favorable review of his controversial book Leaves of Grass. She noted Whitman's fearless individualism and self-reliance, as well as his honest and "undraped" portrayal of sex and the human body. Criticized for her admiration, she continued to champion literature that was ahead of its time. It has been suggested that Whitman imitated her Fern Leaves in his choice of cover art for the first edition.
Late marriage
Sara Willis and James Parton were married in 1856 when she was 45 and well established. She and her husband lived in New York City with Ellen, one of her two surviving daughters. They also raised Ethel, her granddaughter and orphan of Grace, who died in 1862.Later years
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
at what is now 303 East Eighteenth Street near Second Avenue; she and Parton lived in this house for the next 13 years until her death. Fern continued as a regular columnist for the Ledger for the remainder of her life. She was a suffrage
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
supporter, and in 1868 she co-founded Sorosis
Sorosis
Sorosis was the first professional women's club in the United States. The club was organized in New York City with 12 members in March 1868, by Jane Cunningham Croly...
, New York City's pioneer club for women writers and artists, formed after women were excluded from hearing the author Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
at the all-male New York Press Club
New York Press Club
The New York Press Club is a membership organization of and for journalists and media professionals in the New York City metropolitan area. The club is a private, non-profit corporation and is not affiliated with any government office or agency and does not advocate or participate in any political...
dinner in his honor.
Fern dealt with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
for six years and died October 10, 1872. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
next to her first husband. Her gravestone was inscribed simply "Fanny Fern." After her death, her widower James Parton published Fanny Fern: A Memorial Volume (1874).
Published works
Overall, Fanny Fern produced two novels, a novella, six collections of columns, and three books for children.Column collections
- Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio (1853)
- Fern Leaves, second series (1854)
- Fresh Leaves (1857)
- Folly As It Flies (1868)
- Ginger-Snaps (1870)
- Caper-Sauce (1872)
Novels
- Ruth Hall (1854), autobiographical; this is her most well-known work to modern readers.
- Fanny Ford (1855), serialized in the Ledger beginning June 9, 1855.
- Rose Clark (1856)
Children's books
- Little Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends (1853)
- The Play-Day Book (1857)
- The New Story Book for Children (1864)
Literary criticism
Fern was extremely successful in her lifetime as a columnist. She was said to fit her material and subject matter to the audience. Many readers of weekly literary papers were women, and Fern addressed them in a conversational style, often using interjections and exclamation points, while tackling topics that concerned the daily life of ordinary women. Her readers were wives and mothers who worried about their children, current fashions, difficult husbands, and aggravating relatives. Sometimes they felt oppressed, depressed, or stressed. Fern expressed their problems in plain language, addressing women's suffrageSuffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
, the woman's right to her children in a divorce, unfaithful husbands, social customs that restricted women's freedom, and sometimes just having a bad day.
Critics of "women's literature" considered some of these strengths to be weaknesses. They attacked her conversational style as unprofessional, feminine, and too spontaneous. Many male critics labeled her as "sentimental." This has led to counter-criticism about what exactly "sentimental" writing is, and why it is considered bad. The criticism showed women's lower status in society almost as well as Fern did in her work—who decides the standards by which literature is judged, and who does the judging? Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
praised her as an exception to the "damned mob of scribbling women", who wrote "as if the devil was in her". Fern was straightforward when she wrote of subjects such as men's economic and social victimization of women.
Legacy
- Fanny Fern is credited with coining the phrase, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach".
- Henry D. Butler dedicated his 1858 book The Family Aquarium to "the gifted litterateuse whose nom de plume is 'Fanny Fern'"
- Fern's granddaughter Ethel Willis Parton became a correspondent for the periodical The Youth's Companion (founded by her great-uncle, Nathaniel Willis).
- In 2005, Susan Stoderl's operaOperaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
about Fern, titled A.F.R.A.I.D. (American Females for Righteousness Abasement Ignorance & Docillity), premiered as the inaugural show of the Brooklyn Repertory Opera, at the New York International Fringe FestivalNew York International Fringe FestivalThe New York International Fringe Festival, or FringeNYC, is a Fringe theater festival and one of the largest multi-arts events in North America. It takes place over the course of two weeks every August, spread across several neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan, notably the Lower East Side, the...
.
External links
- Bibliography of literary criticism and picture of Fern
- Mister Ron's Basement Podcast, Fanny Fern's works in many episodes,indexed here.