Early life Sara Payson Willis was born in
Portland, Maine, to newspaper owner
Nathaniel Willis and his wife Hannah Parker. She was the fifth of their 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 intended to name her after Payson's mother, Grata Payson. The reverend urged the Willises to reconsider, noting that his mother had never liked the name. 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. After returning home, Willis wrote and edited articles for her father's Christian newspapers,
The Puritan Recorder and ''
The Youth's Companion''.
First marriage and early career In 1837, Willis married Charles Harrington Eldredge, a banker. They had three daughters together: Mary Stace (1838), Grace Harrington (1841), and Ellen Willis (1844). Sara's mother and younger sister Ellen both died early in 1844; in 1845, her eldest daughter Mary died of
brain fever (meningitis); soon afterward, her husband Charles died from
typhoid fever. the young widow married Samuel P. Farrington, a merchant. In 1852, on her own with two daughters to support, she began writing in earnest. She sent samples of her work in 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 proven 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 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 still Farrington and disagreeable to her because of her divorce, 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 Parton, 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. 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 brother N.P. Willis, her in-laws, 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. Criticized for her admiration, she continued to champion literature that was ahead of its time. In 1859, Fern bought a
brownstone in
Manhattan at what is now 303 East Eighteenth Street near Second Avenue. She and Parton lived in the house for 13 years until her death.
Final years 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. The club was formed by Fern and others 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 on 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). ==Published works==