1854 she removed to New York City, and there she farmed her literary connection with Robert Bonner's "New York Ledger," which was continued for sixteen years. In New York she became acquainted with James Parton, the author, who was assisting her brother, Nathaniel P. Willis, in conducting the "Home Journal." In 1856 she became Mr. Parton's wife. Their tastes were similar, and their union proved a happy one. She was a prolific writer. Her works include: "Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio" (Auburn, 1853, followed by a second series, New York, 1854); "Little Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends" (1854); "Ruth Hall," a novel based on the pathetic incidents of her own life (1854); "Fresh Leaves "(1855); "Rose Clark," a novel (1857); "A New Story-Book for Children" (1864); "Folly as it Flies " (1868); "The Play-Day Book" (1869); "Ginger-Snaps" (1870), and "Caper-Sauce, a Volume of Chit-Chat " (1871). Most of her books were republished in London, Eng., and a London publisher in 1855 brought out a volume entitled "Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern." Her husband published, in 1872, "Fanny Fern: A Memorial Volume," containing selections from her writings and a memoir. Her style is unique. She wrote satire and sarcasm so that it attracted those who were portrayed. She had wit, humor and pathos. With mature years and experience her productions took on a philosophical tone and became more polished. Her books have been sold by the hundreds of thousands, and many of them are still in demand. She was especially successful in juvenile literature, and "Fanny Fern" was the most widely known and popular pen-name of the last forty years.
PATTERSON, Mrs. Minnie Ward, poet and author, was born in Niles, Mich. Her youth was passed in that town. Her maiden name was Ward. Her father was a teacher and a man of some literary and forensic ability, and her mother was a woman of decidedly poetic taste. Minnie Ward's naturally poetic temperament found exactly the food it craved in her surroundings, and many of her early school compositions displayed much of both the spirit and art of poetry.
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MINNIE WARD PATTERSON.
Before she reached womanhood, both her parents died, and she was left to the care of strangers and almost wholly to the guidance of her own immature judgment. She appreciated the value of education and by teaching school, taking a few pupils in music and painting and filling every spare moment with writing, she managed to save enough to take a course of study, graduating with honor from Hillsdale College at the age of twenty years, and afterwards received from her alma mater the degree of A.M. Soon after leaving school, she opened a studio in Chicago, and while there was a frequent contributor to the "Sunday Times," usually over the signature of "Zinober Green." While on a sketching tour along the Upper Mississippi, during the summer of 1867, she became the wife of John C. Patterson, a former class-mate in Hillsdale, and a graduate of the law school in Albany, N. Y., who has since become a prominent member of the Michigan bar and has been twice elected to the Senate of that State. They reside in Marshall, Mich. Mrs. Patterson has never been a profuse writer of poetry, but what she has written bears the impress of a clear, well-disciplined mind, earnestness of purpose and intensity of feeling, and her poems have appeared in the Boston "Transcript," "Youth's Companion," "Wide Awake," "Peterson's Magazine," the "Free Press" and the "Tribune" of Detroit, the "Times" and the "Journal" of Chicago, and various other periodicals. Her only published volume of poems is entitled "Pebbles from Old Pathways." Not long after the appearance of that book she became greatly interested in the Norse languages and literature, and her next work of importance was the translation of three volumes of "The Surgeon's Stories" from the Swedish, entitled respectively "Times of Frederick I," "Times of Linnæus," and "Times of Alchemy." Besides those volumes from the Swedish, she has translated many folklore tales from the Norwegian, which first appeared in the Detroit "Free Press" and "Demorest's Magazine,'" as well as some novelettes by living Scandinavian writers. She has now an unpublished novel and an original epic poem. During 1889 she had a series of articles running in the Detroit "Sunday Free Press," entitled "Myths and Traditions of the North," which give an outline of Norse mythology intermingled with quaint original remarks and sparkling wit. Besides the above mentioned and similar work, she is the author of words and music of a half-dozen songs of much sweetness and depth of feeling.
PATTERSON, Mrs. Virginia Sharpe, author, born in Delaware, Ohio, in September, 1841. Authorship and journalism were family
professions. Her father, Hon. George W. Sharpe, published and edited a paper when a boy of seventeen, and for many years edited the "Citizen," in Frederick, Md. He was distinguished as being the youngest member of the Senate of Maryland, and furnished stenographic reports regularly to the Washington and New York papers, an accomplishment unusual in 1828. He was married to Caroline, daughter of Capt. Nicholas Snyder, of Baltimore, a woman of great force of character. They soon removed to Delaware, Ohio. Their two sons were authors. Mrs. Patterson's education was acquired rather by reading than study, as, up to the age of fourteen, she had but few school-days. Her father instructed her at home. His choice library was her
