Laura Dayton Fessenden

Born in 1852 and later known as Laura Dayton Fessenden, she built a varied writing life that included poetry, fiction, and editorial work. She published under her own name and is associated with children's literature as well as broader literary and journalistic writing.

Her best-known surviving work today is likely Moon Children, a whimsical children's book about a sick boy's journey to the far side of the moon. She is also credited with 2002: Childlife One Hundred Years from Now, which suggests the playful, imaginative side of her writing.

Laura Dayton Fessenden died in 1924. Although she is not widely known now, the record of her books and the portrait preserved on her Wikipedia page show a writer who moved comfortably between poetry, storytelling, and magazine-era literary culture.