“Sorrow in satin he can sympathize with, but sorrow in rags is too plebeian for his exquisite organization.”
Today, July 9, is the birthday of Fanny Fern (born 1811). Before she became Fanny Fern, she was Sara Willis, a widow and then divorcée who was trying to write for a living–and to support herself and her two young daughters. She sent some of her early work to her brother, the powerful editor and essayist Nathaniel Willis. It was a risk, for he had disapproved of her decision to leave her possessive and conniving second husband, Samuel Farrington, and had not come to her defense when Farrington tried to slander her. Nathaniel not only refused to publish any of her work, he even took up this haughty tone in his rejection letter: “You overstrain the pathetic, and your humor runs into dreadful vulgarity sometimes. I am sorry that any editor knows that a sister of mine wrote some these which you sent me.”
But her drive and her lucid, funny prose soon brought her success and in a wonderfully ironic turn, her brother’s young assistant, James Parton, published some of her work, not knowing that “Fanny Fern” was really his boss’s sister. When her identity was revealed, Nathaniel Willis forbade Parton from publishing any more of his sister’s work. Parton resigned in protest and soon he and Sara fell in love. In short order, she published her first collection of short pieces, Fern Leaves (1853), which became one of the nation’s first bestsellers with 70,000 copies sold within the year. She followed it with Ruth Hall
