Constance Fenimore Woolson
Constance Fenimore Woolson was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the American South, and American expatriates in Europe.
Life and writings
In America: the story-writer
Woolson was born in Claremont, New Hampshire, but her family soon moved to Cleveland, Ohio, after the deaths of three of her sisters from scarlet fever. Woolson was educated at the Cleveland Female Seminary and a boarding school in New York. She traveled extensively through the midwest and northeastern regions of the U.S. during her childhood and young adulthood.Woolson's father died in 1869. The following year she began to publish fiction and essays in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine. Her first full-length publication was a children's book, The Old Stone House. In 1875 she published her first volume of short stories, Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches, based on her experiences in the Great Lakes region, especially Mackinac Island.
From 1873 to 1879 Woolson spent winters with her mother in St. Augustine, Florida. During these visits she traveled widely in the South which gave her material for her next collection of short stories, Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches. After her mother's death in 1879, Woolson went to Europe, staying at a succession of hotels in England, France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany.
In Europe: the novelist
Woolson published her first novel Anne in 1880, followed by three others: East Angels, Jupiter Lights and Horace Chase. In 1883 she published the novella For the Major, a story of the postwar South that has become one of her most respected fictions. In the winter of 1889-1890 she traveled to Egypt and Greece, which resulted in a collection of travel sketches, Mentone, Cairo and Corfu.In 1893 Woolson rented an elegant apartment on the Grand Canal of Venice. Suffering from influenza and depression, she either jumped or fell to her death from a fourth story window in the apartment in January 1894, surviving for about an hour after the fall.
Two volumes of her short stories appeared after her death: The Front Yard and Other Italian Stories and Dorothy and Other Italian Stories. She is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, and is memorialized by Anne's Tablet on Mackinac Island, Michigan.
Selected works
Selected works of Constance Fenimore Woolson were printed in several volumes of family biography by Woolson's niece, Clare Benedict. Five Generations: 1785-1923 is the general title for three volumes published in 1930: Voices Out of the Past, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and The Benedicts Abroad. Benedict then reprinted the second volume of the series, Constance Fenimore Woolson, in 1932 and added selected published and unpublished materials in “Appendix A.” In this reference section, the four volumes Benedict edited are referred to as: Benedict 1, Benedict 2, Benedict 3, Benedict 4.Novels
- The Old Stone House, 1873.
- Anne, 1880-1881.
- For the Major, 1882-1883.
- East Angels, 1885-1886.
- Jupiter Lights, 1889.
- Horace Chase, 1893.
Short stories
- Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches.
- Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches.
- The Front Yard and Other Italian Stories.
- Dorothy and Other Italian Stories.
Poetry
- “Charles Dickens. Christmas, 1870.”
- “In Memoriam,” 1871.
- “Alas,” 1871.
- “Thy Will Be Done,” 1871.
- “The Herald’s Cry,” 1872.
- “Love Unexpressed,” 1872.
- “Longing,” 1872.
- “Walpurgis Night,” 1872.
- “The Heart of June,” 1872.
- “Ideal. ” 1872.
- “Corn Fields,” 1872.
- “Lake Erie in September,” 1872.
- “Floating. Otsego Lake, September, 1872,” 1872.
- “October’s Song,” 1872.
- “Christmas in the City,” 1872.
- “Off Thunder Bay,” 1872.
- “Two Ways,” 1873.
- “Sail-Rock, Lake Superior,” 1873.
- “The Greatest of All is Charity,” 1873.
- “February,” 1873.
- “March,” 1873.
- “Commonplace,” 1873.
- “Cleopatra,” 1873.
- “Memory,” 1873.
- “Heliotrope,” 1873.
- “Kentucky Belle.,” 1873.
- “The Haunting Face,” 1873.
- “Hero Worship,” 1873.
- “Delores,” 1874.
- “At the Smithy. ” 1874.
- “Indian Summer,” 1874.
- “Yellow Jessamine,” 1874.
- “The Florida Beach,” 1874.
- “Pine-Barrens,” 1874.
- “Matanzas River,” 1874.
- “The Legend of Maria Sanchez Creek,” 1875.
- “A Fire in the Forest,” 1875.
- “On the Border,” 1876.
- “Only the Brakesman,” 1876.
- “Morris Island,” 1876.
- “Four-Leaved Clover,” 1876.
- “On a Homely Woman, Dead,” 1876.
- “To George Eliot,” 1876.
- “Tom,” 1876.
- “Forgotten,” 1876.
- “To Jean Ingelow,” 1876.
- “Mizpah. Genesis 31.49,” 1877.
- “Two Women. 1862,” 1877.
- “‘I Too!’” 1877.
- “An Intercepted Letter,” 1878.
- “To Certain Biographers,” 1878.
- “Mentone,” 1884.
- “Gettysburg 1876,” 1889.
- “In March,” 1890.
- “Detroit River.”
- “Mackinac–Revisited.”
- “Clara ‘Bright, Illustrious.’”
- “Contrast. Six O’Clock Broadway.”
- “Plum’s Picture.”
- “We Shall Meet Them Again.”
- “Gentleman Waife. ”
- “Martins on the Telegraph Wire.”
- “Haj you Chorgotten?”
- “The God of February.”
- “In the December Twilight.”
Travel writing and nonfiction
- “The Happy Valley.”
- “Fairy Island.”
- “New York. From Our Special Correspondent.”
- “New York. From Our Special Woman Correspondent.”
- “Gotham. From Our Own Correspondent.”
- “Gotham. From Our Own Correspondent.”
- “Gotham. From Our Own Correspondent.”
- “Gotham. From Our Own Correspondent.”
- “A Day of Mystery.”
- “The Haunted Lake.”
- “In Search of the Picturesque.”
- “American Cities–Detroit.”
- “Round by Propeller.”
- “Mackinac Island.”
- “The Wine Islands of Lake Erie.”
- “Lakeshore Relics.”
- “A Voyage to the Unknown River.”
- “The Ancient City.”
- “The French Broad.”
- “Up the Ashley and Cooper.”
- “Lake Superior.”
- “Mackinac.”
- “The South Shore of Lake Erie.”
- “On The Ohio.”
- “The Oklawaha.”
- “Pictures of Travel: The Last Summer of the St. Gotthard.”
- “The Roman May, and a Walk.”
- “At Mentone.”Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 68 : 189-216 ; 68 : 367-91. Rpt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896. Benedict 2: 163-77; Benedict 4 : 163-77; Constance Fenimore Woolson: Selected Stories and Travel Narratives. Ed. Victoria Brehm and Sharon Dean. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2004.
- “Cairo in 1890.”Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 83 : 651-74, 828-55. Rpt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896. Benedict 2: 344-63; Benedict 4 : 344-63; Constance Fenimore Woolson: Selected Stories and Travel Narratives'. Ed. Victoria Brehm and Sharon Dean. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2004.
- “Corfu and the Ionian Sea.”Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 85 : 351-370. Rpt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896. Benedict 2: 307-39; Benedict 4 : 307-39.
- Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu. ''
Critical reception
In recent decades, critical work on Woolson has blossomed and teaching of Woolson at the high school and university levels has increased. Sharon L. Dean's The Complete Letters of Constance Fenimore Woolson, published in 2012, is a wonderful resource for scholars, while Anne Boyd Rioux's Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, published in 2016, provides the first full-length biography of Woolson. The Constance Fenimore Woolson Society holds regular conferences and hosts panels at the annual meeting of the American Literature Association and the biennial Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference.