Virginia Sharpe Patterson

author

Virginia Sharpe Patterson

1841–1913

Best remembered for the charming bird tale Dickey Downy, this 19th-century American writer also worked in journalism and published under the pen name Garry Gaines. Her life moved between newspapers, literature, and a busy family world, giving her work a grounded, observant feel.

1 Audiobook

Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird

Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird

by Virginia Sharpe Patterson

About the author

Anne Virginia Sharpe Patterson was born in Delaware, Ohio, in September 1841 and was educated first at home by her father, George W. Sharpe, before attending the Delaware Female Seminary. Writing and journalism ran in the family, and she grew up in a household closely connected to newspapers and literary work.

After her marriage to Robert J. Patterson in 1862, she lived for periods in Ohio, Oklahoma, Missouri, and eventually Chicago. She wrote for newspapers and magazines, contributed both prose and verse, and also published under the pseudonym Garry Gaines.

She is most often associated today with Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird, a gentle and imaginative work that has remained available through public-domain libraries. Patterson died in 1913, but her surviving work still offers a glimpse of a writer who brought warmth, curiosity, and a love of storytelling to readers of her time.