Jean Webster

Born Alice Jane Chandler Webster in Fredonia, New York, she wrote under the pen name Jean Webster and became one of the best-known American authors of the early 20th century. She studied at Vassar College, where her interest in writing took shape, and went on to publish novels and stories that mixed lively storytelling with sympathy for young women trying to build independent lives.

Her best-known book, Daddy-Long-Legs (1912), was a major success and was followed by Dear Enemy. Reference works and biographical sources also note her family connection to publisher Charles L. Webster, who had worked with Mark Twain, and describe her as a writer whose fiction often blended charm, social observation, and a reform-minded outlook.

She married Glenn Ford McKinney in 1915 and died in New York on June 11, 1916, from complications after childbirth. Though her career was short, her books have had an unusually long afterlife, especially with readers who enjoy smart, optimistic coming-of-age fiction.