Fannie Belle Irving

Fannie Belle Irving is an elusive figure in American literary history. Reliable reference sources currently list her birth and death dates as unknown, and the main work that can be firmly connected to her is Six Girls: A Home Story.

That novel was published in Boston by J. Q. Adams & Co. in 1881, and later editions followed. The book has remained accessible through major public-domain collections, including the Library of Congress and Project Gutenberg, which suggests it continued to find readers long after its first appearance.

Because so little personal information is securely documented, Irving is remembered chiefly through her fiction rather than through a detailed life story. For modern readers, that makes Six Girls not only a charming period novel, but also the clearest window into an author who has otherwise mostly slipped from view.