author
Fanny Forester
1817–1854
A popular 19th-century American writer, she published lively poems, sketches, and stories under the pen name Fanny Forester. Her path from poverty and factory work to national literary success gives her work an added sense of grit and feeling.
1 Audiobook
Effie Maurice Or What do I Love Best
by Fanny Forester
About the author
Born Emily Chubbuck in Eaton, New York, in 1817, she grew up in difficult circumstances and worked in a woolen mill as a child before building an education for herself. She became a teacher and began publishing stories and books, first under her own name and then as Fanny Forester, the signature that made her widely known.
As Fanny Forester, she contributed to well-known magazines and became a recognizable literary voice of her time. Her writing ranged from children's literature to poems, sketches, and reflective prose, and contemporary accounts remember her as both popular and hardworking.
Later, after marrying the missionary Adoniram Judson, she was also known as Emily Judson. She spent part of her later life connected with missionary work, but her health declined, and she died in Hamilton, New York, in 1854, still remembered for the warmth and energy of the writing she produced under her famous pen name.