author
Virginia Sharpe Patterson
1841–1913
A 19th-century American writer and journalist, she published fiction and nature-minded work with warmth and moral purpose, sometimes under the pen name Garry Gaines. Her best-known surviving title, Dickey Downy, shows her gift for telling a story through an unusual and memorable point of view.
1 Audiobook
Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird
by Virginia Sharpe Patterson
About the author
Born in Delaware, Ohio, in September 1841, Anne Virginia Sharpe Patterson became an American author and journalist at a time when both fields were still difficult for many women to enter. Biographical sources note that writing and newspaper work ran in her family, and she was also known by the pseudonym Garry Gaines.
She wrote across fiction, journalism, and children's literature, and is now most often linked with Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird (1899), a story that blends sentiment, observation of nature, and a reform-minded message. That mix of storytelling and social feeling helps explain her lasting niche in late 19th-century American writing.
Patterson died in 1913. Although she is not widely known today, her work still offers a vivid glimpse of the literary world of her era, especially its interest in moral tales, animal perspectives, and accessible writing for general readers.