Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
portrait by Gilbert Stuart
Born5 November 1780 Edit this on Wikidata
Newburyport Edit this on Wikidata
Died27 December 1865 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 85)
Boston Edit this on Wikidata
OccupationWriter Edit this on Wikidata
Spouse(s)George Gardner Lee Edit this on Wikidata
Parent(s)
  • Micajah Sawyer Edit this on Wikidata

Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee (November 5, 1780[1]-December 27, 1865[2]) was an American author, best known for her 1837 novelette Three Experiments of Living which was published in more than 30 editions in the United States, and 10 in England. Lee was a popular novelist during her life, though her writing was not lauded and her success is now largely forgotten.[3]

Life

Lee was born in 1780 to physician Micajah Sawyer and Sibyll Farnham, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She married George Gardiner Lee of Boston in 1807, on the same day her sister Mary Anna married Philip Jeremiah Schuyler.[4] George Lee died in 1816 leaving Lee with three young daughters.[5][6] She then went to live with her brother William Sawyer, until his death in 1858. She died at age 85 in Boston in December 1865.[7]

Writing

Lee wrote an appendix to an autobiography of Hannah Adams in 1832, which older sources often cite as her first publication, although her little-noticed novel Grace Seymour was first published in 1830. Three Experiments of Living (1837), arising out of the financial crises of the Panic of 1837 was a bestseller for many years. According to the publisher, 20,000 copies were sold in its first two months of publication.[8] It was followed by a successful sequel Elinor Fulton. Three Experiments was in print for almost fifty years.[3][9] Lee also wrote a number of non-fiction histories.[6][10] The success of Three Experiments was illustrated by the quick imitations such as Fourth Experiment of Living: Living Without Means by Horatio Hastings Weld.[11][7][3]

Bibliography (incomplete)

  • Grace Seymour (1830)
  • The Backslider (1835)
  • Three Experiments of Living (novel) (1837)
  • Elinor Fulton (1837)
  • The Contrast, or Modes of Education (1837)
  • The Harcourts (1837)
  • Rich Enough: A Tale of the Times (1837)
  • Historical Sketches of the Old Painters (1838)
  • The Life and Times of Martin Luther (1839)
  • Rosanna, or Scenes in Boston (1839)
  • The Life and Times of Thomas Cranmer (1841)
  • Tales (1842)
  • The Huguenots in France and America (1843)
  • The World Before You, or the Log Cabin (1847)
  • Stories from Life (1849)
  • Sketches and Stories From Life: For The Young (1850)
  • Memoir of Pierre Toussaint (1853)
  • Familiar Sketches of Sculptors and Sculpture (1854)

References

  1. ↑ Hall, Elton W. (September 2014). "Hannah Farnham Lee" (PDF). The Colonial Society of Massachusetts. 19: 1.
  2. ↑ Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John (1888). "Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee". Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography. p. 662.
  3. 1 2 3 Wright, Lyle H. Traditional Errors in American Biography, Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jan., 1942), pp. 273-76 (focusing on the actual facts of the publication date of Grace Seymour and whether it was largely lost in a fire).
  4. ↑ Simmons, Nancy Craig, ed. The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, p. 36 (1993)
  5. ↑ History Happenings, The Daily News (14 December 2019)
  6. 1 2 Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume 3, p. 662 (1888)
  7. 1 2 The Author of "Three Experiments of Living", The Monthly Religious Magazine (February 1866), pp. 28-30
  8. ↑ Adams, Oscar Fay (16 January 1913). Hannah Farnham Lee, The Christian Register (note that this source misstates the year of her husband's death)
  9. ↑ Templin, Mary. Panic Fiction: Women's Responses to Antebellum Economic Crisis, in Legacy, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 1-16 (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2004)
  10. ↑ Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 73-78 (University of Iowa Press, 2008)
  11. ↑ Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837, p. 77-82 (2013)
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