Fanny Fern

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Standard Name: Fern, Fanny
Birth Name: Sara Payson Willis
Birth Name: Grata Payson Willis
Married Name: Sara Payson Eldredge
Married Name: Sara Payson Farrington
Married Name: Sara Payson Parton
Pseudonym: Mrs James Parton
Pseudonym: Fanny Fern
Sara Payson Willis, the journalist and novelist known as FF , was one of the most successful United States writers of the nineteenth century. Author of the best-selling Ruth Hall, she was also widely read as a columnist, a genre she worked in for twenty years.
Oval black-and-white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Fanny Fern. She is sitting with her cheek resting on her left hand. Her dark hair is parted in the middle, done in rigid waves. She is wearing earrings and a dark dress buttoned in front with thin stripes on her sleeves.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Closest to CMS were her siblings and their spouses, several of whom were also published authors. The Sedgwick family and Fanny Kemble were apparently the inner circle of the literary scene in the Berkshires,...
Friends, Associates Harriet Beecher Stowe
Her close friends at this time included Sara Willis , who went on to become the writer known as Fanny Fern.
Hedrick, Joan. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. Oxford University Press.
55
Reception Mary Fortune
Lucy Sussex names Fanny Fern , George Augustus Sala , and Charles Dickens , as well as MF 's Australian contemporary Marcus Clarke , as influences on her non-fiction writing. Sussex calls her tone vital...
Textual Features Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Samuel Ringgold Ward's Introductory editorial in the first issue of The Provincial Freeman, his sole contribution to the periodical, outlined its aims. He wrote that the paper would be devoted to the elevation of...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Fern, Fanny. Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio. Milner.
Fern, Fanny, and Birket Foster. Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio. Ingram, Cooke, 1853.
Smith, Susan Belasco, and Fanny Fern. “Introduction”. Ruth Hall, Penguin, 1997, p. xv - xlv.
Parton, James, and Fanny Fern. “Memoir of Fanny Fern”. Fanny Fern. A Memorial Volume, G. W. Carleton, 1874.
Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall. Penguin, 1997.