Dorothy Canfield Fisher

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Dorothy Frances Canfield Fisher (born February 17, 1879 in Lawrence , Kansas , † November 9, 1958 in Arlington , Vermont ) was an American author and civil rights activist. For Eleanor Roosevelt , she was one of the ten most influential personalities in the United States.

She campaigned for women's rights and equality. She also established Montessori education in the United States , chaired an adult education program, and shaped her country's literary taste as a member of the Book of the Month Club's selection committee between 1925 and 1951 .

Life

Dorothy Frances Canfield - named after the character Dorothea Brooke from the novel Middlemarch - was born in 1879 as the second child and only daughter of political scientist and sociologist James Hulme Canfield and author and artist Flavia Camp . Her childhood was marked by numerous moves: from 1877 to 1891, her father was a professor at the University of Kansas , where he taught history, and eventually became president of the National Education Association . He was later rector of the University of Nebraska , president of Ohio State University, and finally librarian at Columbia University . At the age of 10, Canfield Fisher went to France with her mother for a year, where the mother studied art. She learned French during this time and later decided to study French, which she graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in 1899 . Then she studied Romance studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Columbia University, where she received her doctorate in England in 1904 with a dissertation on Corneille and Racine .

Her first professional work as a writer appeared in 1902: in March she wrote about Holy Week in Spain in the New York Times . In 1903 she worked briefly as a research assistant at Western Reserve University in Ohio , but soon took a job as a secretary at the Horace Man School in New York City . During this time she published some short stories in magazines. In 1905 she toured Europe and visited Germany, France and Norway. Her first novella “Gunhild” from 1907 is the result of this journey. When her mother fell ill, Canfield Fisher gave up her job, took care of her mother and devoted her free time to writing.

Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, whom she met at Columbia University. The couple had two children. The daughter Sally was born in 1909 and after her marriage to the zoologist John Paul Scott wrote children's books as Sally Scott herself, as did Canfield Fisher's granddaughter Vivian Scott. Their son James became a surgeon.

As Canfield Fisher 1911, the day care center Casa dei Bambini of Maria Montessori in Rome attended Montessori and met in person, she was so impressed that she decided to bring the Montessori method to America. She translated Montessori's books into English and wrote three non-fiction books and two novels on Montessori's pedagogical approaches.

During the First World War , she followed her husband to France in 1916. While John Redwood Fisher volunteered in the Medical Corps, Canfield Fisher raised the children in Crouy-sur-Ourcq near the front lines and worked on a Braille newspaper for blind war veterans. She also founded a convalescent home for French refugee children from occupied territories. During this time, under the impact of the war, numerous short stories were written, which she published in 1918 and 1919. In addition, she wrote her best-known novella "Understood Betsy" (German: The very best apple sauce 1917) during this time .

After returning to the United States in 1918, the Fishers settled on a Canfield homestead in Vermont. Canfield Fisher was appointed to the Vermont State Education Committee in 1919 to improve public education in rural areas. In addition to child education, she was particularly concerned with education and rehabilitation in women's prisons. After World War II , Canfield Fisher chaired a US committee that pardoned conscientious objectors in 1921 and helped Jewish intellectuals emigrate.

She wrote her last fictional works in the late 1930s. After her son died on a war mission in the Philippines, she only published non-fiction books.

Since its founding in 1926, Canfield Fisher was a member of the selection committee of the American book club "Book of the Month Club" and thus decisively shaped the literary taste of the Americans during this time. In 1931 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Canfield-Fisher died of complications from a stroke in Arlington, Vermont in 1958 at the age of 79 .

engagement

Canfield-Fisher was a member of numerous institutions, including:

Honors

Canfield Fisher was the first woman to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College . She also received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Middlebury College , Swarthmore College , Smith College , Williams College , Ohio State University, and the University of Vermont .

The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award is a prize for new American children's books, the winner of which is determined by a children's jury.

At Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont , a student residence hall was named after Canfield Fisher.

Works

Canfield Fisher's books deal primarily with everyday problems and the development of the individual and are strongly influenced by her experiences in Europe. Her talent for portraying the characters in her works was considered to be outstanding. Her books have been translated into French, German, Dutch and Italian. Her best-known book is The Very Best Applesauce (original title: Understood Betsy ), a children's book about a little orphan girl who was sent to Vermont to live with the cousins. Canfield Fisher wrote a total of 22 novels and short stories and 18 non-fiction books.

The author spoke five languages. In addition to her own writing, she was also active as a literary critic and translator. For tax reasons, she wrote her fiction works as "Canfield" and the non-fiction books as "Canfield Fisher". Canfield Fisher was mainly influenced by the close friendship with Willa Cather . with which she published her first literary work in the yearbook of the University of Nebraska in 1894 with “The Fear that walks by Noonday”. She was also in close contact with Henry Seidel Canby , Richard Wright , Heywood Broun , Witter Bynner , Isak Dinesen and Robert Frost .

Novels and short stories

  • 1907: Gunhild
  • 1912: The Squirrel-Cage
  • 1915: The swinging string (original title: The Bent Twig ), Der Greif, Wiesbaden, 1948
  • 1916: The Real Motive
  • 1916: Fellow Captains (with Sarah N. Cleghorn)
  • 1917: The very best applesauce ( Understood Betsy , 1977 also appeared as A happy year for Betsy ), Bertelsmann, Munich, Gütersloh, Vienna, 1975
  • 1918: Home Fires in France
  • 1919: The Day of Glory
  • 1921: The Brimming Cup
  • 1922: Rough-Hewn
  • 1924: The Home Maker
  • 1926: Her Son's Wife
  • 1930: The Deepening Stream
  • 1933: Bonfire
  • 1939: Seasoned Timber

Short stories

  • 1915: Hillsboro People
  • 1916: The Real Motive
  • 1923: Raw Material
  • 1925: Ordered stories (Made-to-Order Stories) , Williams & Co., Berlin, 1930
  • 1949: Four Square
  • 1997: The Bedquilt and Other Stories

Non-fiction

  • 1904: Corneille and Racine in England (dissertation)
  • 1906: English Rhetoric and Composition (with GR Carpenter)
  • 1906: What Shall We Do Now? (with other authors)
  • 1912: A Montessori Mother (A Montessori Mother) , Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1927
  • 1913: A Montessori Manual
  • 1914: Mothers and Children
  • 1916: Self-Reliance
  • 1927: Why Stop Learning?
  • 1932: Tourists Accommodated
  • 1940: Nothing Ever Happens and How It Does (with Sarah N. Cleghorn )
  • 1940: Tell Me a Story
  • 1943: Our Young Folks
  • 1946: American Portraits
  • 1950: Paul Revere and the Minute Men
  • 1950: Our Independence and the Constitution
  • 1952: A Fair World for All
  • 1953: Vermont Tradition
  • 1957: Memories of Arlington, Vermont
  • 1959: And Long Remember

Translations

  • 1923: Life of Christ (by Giovanni Papini , translation from Italian)
  • 1931: Work: What It Has Meant to Men through the Ages (by Adriano Tilgher , translation from Italian)

literature

  • Elizabeth Yates: The Lady from Vermont: Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Life and World . Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro 1971, ISBN 0-8289-0127-9 .
  • Ida. H. Washington: Dorothy Canfield Fisher - A Biography . The New England Press, Shelburne, Vermont 1982, OCLC 08153215 .
  • Mark J. Madigan (Ed.): Keeping Fires Night and Day: Selected Letters of Dorothy Canfield Fisher . University of Missouri Press, Columbia 1993, ISBN 0-8262-0884-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Elizabeth J. Wright: Home Economics: Children, Consumption, and Montessori Education in Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Understood Betsy. In: Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 32, No. 3, 2007, pp. 217-230.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Dorothy Canfield Collection . University of Vermont Libraries, 1998.
  3. ↑ James Hulme Canfield Papers. Finding AIDS . University of Vermont Libraries
  4. ↑ Barbara Sicherman, Carol Hurd Green: Notable American Women: The Modern Period: a Biographical Dictionary . Volume 4, Radcliffe College, 1980, pp. 235-236.
  5. ^ Dorothy Canfield Fisher Dies in Vermont at 79. In: The Boston Globe . November 10, 1958.
  6. ^ Members: Dorothy Canfield Fisher. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 28, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b c Biography ( Memento from January 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award
  8. ^ Valerie Bang-Jensen: A Children's Choice Program: Insights into Book Selection, Social Relationships, and Reader Identity. In: Language Arts. 87/3, 2010, pp. 169-176.
  9. ^ Mark J. Madigan, Willa Cather and Dorothy Canfield Fisher: Rift, Reconciliation, and One of Ours. In: Cather Studies. 1, 1990.
personal data
SURNAME Fisher, Dorothy Canfield
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Canfield, Dorothy Frances
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author, educator and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Lawrence , Kansas , United States
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1958
Place of death Arlington , Vermont , United States