Ruth Hall.
[Parton, Sara Payson]. Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time by Fanny Fern. New York: Mason Brothers, 1855.
12mo; yellow endpapers; contemporary ink name on front flyleaf; brown cloth blind and gilt-stamped cloth; tips a little frayed and cloth lightly rubbed; generally very good.
First edition. Sara Payson Parton (1811-1872), America’s first woman newspaper columnist and originator of the saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” was the daughter of Nathaniel Willis, editor and founder of two Boston newspaper, and a sister of N.P. Willis, New York poet and journalist. But, her meteoric rise to fame was accomplished without the help of—in fact without the knowledge of—her family. Her autobiographical novel, Ruth Hall, is a rags-to-riches story with a difference: the heroine realizes the American dream of success on her own, without the help of or by marrying a man, just as the author, “Fanny Fern” had. A graduate of Catharine Beecher’s Female Seminary, she earned herself the reputation of a cut-up and wit. Widowed with two young children to support at age 35, she entered into a disastrous marriage of convenience to Samuel Farrington, whom she left two years later. This scandalized her family who refused to support her or her children; Parton defied convention by portraying this abandonment in her novel Ruth Hall. She began writing for the Boston Olive Branch and True Flag, followed by work as a regular columnist for the New York Musical World and Times. Her witty, satirical pieces were immensely popular and her essays were gathered and published in Fern Leaves From Fanny’s Portfolio (1953), which was a bestseller. After the publication of Ruth Hall, she was offered the sum of $100 a column to writer for the New York Ledger, making her the highest paid newspaper writer of her day. Parton wrote one other novel; it is Ruth Hall, however, that is considered her most significant work. Praised by Nathaniel Hawthorne for removing the strait jacket of convention and coming before the public “stark naked” which was the only way for a woman to write anything worthwhile.
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