Fanny Fern's Fern Leaves

Profile manager: Melanie Paul [send private message]

Stuff that doesn't need to be on the sidebar of Sara "Fanny Fern" Willis's profile and in the biography text causing doubled-vision.

Digitally colourised version of Coffin's title page:

Title page for "Fern Leaves".

Fern Leaves

    Images from "Fanny Fern's" book "Fern Leaves From Fanny’s Portfolio", created as Original Designs by Fred. M. Coffin.

Fern Leaves title page.

The Little Brown House.

The Blue Stocking.

Mr Stubbs and Friends.

The Aged Minister.

Simon Skinflint.

Our Street.

May-Day Moving.

Little Ferns

    Images from "Fanny Fern's" book "Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends", created as Original Designs by Fred. M. Coffin.

Little Nelly

Hatty's Mistake.

Only a Penny

Uncle Jolly

Letty

Crazy Tim.

Other Book Covers

Caper Sauce book cover.

Ruth Hall book cover.

Ginger Snaps title page.

An Excerpt

From FRESH LEAVES.

THE “FAVORITE” CHILD.

    Why will parents use that expression? What right have you to have a favorite child? The All-Father maketh his sun to shine alike upon the daisy and the rose. Where would you be, were His care measured by your merits or deserts? Is your child none the less your child, that nature has denied him a fluent tongue, or forgotten her cunning, when, in careless mood, she fashioned his limbs? Because beauty beams not from the eye, is there no intelligence there? Because the rosy flush mantles not the pale cheek, does the blood never tingle at your coldness or neglect? Because the passive arms are not wound about your neck, has the soul no passionate yearnings for parental love? O, how often does God, more merciful than you, passing by the Josephs of your household, stoop in his pity and touch those quivering lips with a live coal from off the altar? How often does this neglected one, burst from out the chrysalis in which your criminal coldness has enveloped him, and soaring far above your wildest parental imaginings, compel from your ambition, what he could not gain from your love?

    How often does he replenish with liberal hand the coffers which the “favorite child,” in the selfishness which you fostered, has drained of their last fraction. “He that is first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” Let parents write this on their heart tablets. Let them remember it when they repulse the little clinging arms, or turn a deaf ear to the childish tale of sorrow. O, gather up those clinging tendrils of affection with gentlest touch; trample them not with the foot of haste or insensibility rudely in the dust.

“And they, in the darkest of days, shall be

Greenness, and beauty, and strength to thee.”

From Rose Clark.

"Weeping! dear Gertrude," exclaimed John, as he entered his sister's studio, and seated himself by her side.

Gertrude laid her head upon his shoulder without replying.

"You do not often see me thus," she said, after a pause. "To-day is the anniversary of my husband's death, and as I sat at the window and saw the autumn wind showering down the bright leaves, I thought of that mournful October day, when, turning despairingly away from his dying moans, I walked to the window of his sick room, and saw the leaves eddying past as they do now. I could almost see again before me that pallid face, almost hear those fleeting, spasmodic breaths, and all the old agony woke up again within me. And yet," said Gertrude, smiling through her tears, "such blissful memories of his love came with it! Oh! surely, John, love like this perishes not with its object—dies not in this world?

"And my little Arthur, too, John—you have never seen my treasures. You have never looked upon the faces which made earth such a paradise for me;" and touching a spring in a rosewood box near her, Gertrude drew from it the pictures of her husband and child, and as John scanned their features in silence, she leaned upon his shoulder, and the bright teardrops fell like rain upon them.

Bluestocking - an explanation

What was, or is, a "Bluestocking"?

A "bluestocking" was (and is) an educated, intellectual woman, although until the late 18th century, the term had referred to learned people of both sexes. It has developed negative implications and is now often used in a derogatory manner, as a "put down" to a woman who appears to be more intelligent than her male colleagues. The French equivalent bas bleu had a similar connotation. The term appears to have its origins in the Blue Stocking society, a group of women who wished for more intellectual discussions than the more "normal" (for their day) social evenings spent playing card games.