Lee, Hannah Farnham (1780–1865)

views updated

Lee, Hannah Farnham (1780–1865)

American writer . Born Hannah Farnham Sawyer in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1780; died in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 17, 1865 (also seen as December 28); daughter of Micajah Sawyer (a physician); married George Gardner Lee, in 1807 (died 1816); children: three daughters.

Selected works:

Grace Seymour (1830); Memoir of Hannah Adams (1832); The Backslider (1835); The Contrast; or, Modes of Education (1837); Three Experiments of Living (1837); Elinor Fulton (1837); Fourth Experiment of Living: Living Without Means (1837); The Harcourts (1837); Living on Other People's Means; or the History of Simon Silver (1837); New Experiments: Means Without Living (1837); Historical Sketches of Old Painters (1838); The Life and Times of Martin Luther (1839); Rosanna; or, Scenes of Boston (1839); The Life and Times of Thomas Crammer (1841); Tales (1842); The Huguenots in France and America (1843); The Log Cabin; or, The World before You (1844); Sketches and Stories from Life: For the Young (1850); Familiar Sketches of Sculpture and Sculptors (1854); Memoir of Pierre Toussaint (1854).

Widowed after nine years of marriage and left with three daughters to support, Hannah Farnham Lee is believed to have turned to writing in order to keep her family afloat. Most of her early works focus on the difficulties women face in earning their own living and surviving on limited means, including her first novel, Grace Seymour (1830), which was published when she was 50. In it, she introduced the strong, virtuous heroine that came to dominate the 20 domestic novels she turned out between 1830 and 1854. In her later career, Lee also produced nonfiction historical works, educational in nature.

The book that established Lee as a writer, Three Experiments of Living, was published in 1837, during America's first serious economic depression. It was so popular that Lee's Boston publisher issued it three times that year, under slightly different titles. The novel, and its sequel Elinor Fulton (1837), focus on the Fultons, a family caught up in materialism. When they lose their money, they nearly fall apart, but are kept together by their virtuous daughter Elinor, who, as the main character of the second novel, supports her mother and siblings while her father attempts to reestablish his medical practice in the West. Like most of Lee's heroines, Elinor is endowed with the ability to make money and to spend it wisely.

Having established her reputation, Lee turned to nonfiction, specializing in history and art. In the first of these, Historical Sketches of Old Painters (1838), she wrote of artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Antonio Correggio. Called in its day a "romantic biography," the work was enormously popular and reissued four times between 1839 and 1854, by various publishers in Boston, Philadelphia, and England. Lee's subsequent nonfiction, including The Life and Times of Martin Luther (1839), The Life and Times of Thomas Crammer (1841), The Huguenots in France and America (1843), Familiar Sketches of Sculpture and Sculptors (1954), and Memoir of Pierre Toussaint (1851), also sold well, although by modern-day standards, according to Lina Mainiero , they are unoriginal and overly didactic.

Hannah Lee's personal life remains a mystery. The daughter of a prominent physician in Newburyport, Massachusetts, she lived most of her life in Boston and died there on either December 17 or 28, 1865. Never considered a major writer even at the height of her popularity, Hannah Lee had already slipped into obscurity by the time of her death.