author
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
1831–1885
A prolific 19th-century American writer, she moved easily from sentimental fiction to sensation and mystery. She is now especially remembered for The Dead Letter (1866), a landmark early detective novel in the United States.
6 Audiobooks
The Bad Boy at Home, and His Experiences in Trying to Become an Editor 1885
by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
The Dead Letter: An American Romance
by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
Nat Wolfe; or, The gold hunters: A romance of Pike's Peak and New York
by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
The Blunders of a Bashful Man
by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
Tagebuch eines bösen Buben
by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
Alice Wilde: The Raftsman's Daughter. A Forest Romance
by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
About the author
Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on March 2, 1831, she published widely under several names, including Seeley Regester, and built a remarkable career in popular fiction. After marrying editor and publisher Orville James Victor, she became closely connected to the fast-growing world of mass-market American literature.
Her work ranged across domestic stories, reform-minded novels, dime novels, and mysteries. Modern readers often know her best for The Dead Letter, first published in 1866, which is frequently described as one of the first American detective novels and an early example of a woman writing crime fiction in the United States.
She died in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, on June 26, 1885. Although many of her books were written for a huge popular audience of her own time, her reputation today rests on her versatility, her productivity, and her important place in the early history of detective fiction.