Guest Blogger Debra Brenegan on The Remarkable Life of Fanny Fern
Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome author Debra Brenegan to the blog today to talk about Fanny Fern, once one of the highest paid columnists in the United States, making $100 a week way back in 1855. Talk about a scandalous woman! Fanny Fern helped define the term. And the sad thing is that most people have never heard of her. I had never heard of her either until one day, in graduate school, I took a nineteenth-century American Literature class with a professor who told me, “I know a writer you’re just going to love.” This writer, Fanny Fern, wasn’t on our reading list that semester, so, he added her book, Ruth Hall, to the reading list of a course I took with him the next semester. And, he was right – I adored her! Fanny Fern was the highest-paid, most-popular writer of her era. She served as a literary mentor to Walt Whitman, earned the respect of Nathaniel Hawthorne and was friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe. Fern’s personal life was a rollercoaster of highs and lows. She w