Dorothy Canfield Fisher was born 17 February 1879 in Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, United States to James Hulme Canfield (1847-1909) and Flavia Camp (1844-1930) and died 9 November 1958 Arlington, Bennington County, Vermont, United States of unspecified causes. She married John Redwood Fisher (1883-1959) 1907 .
Dorothy Canfield Fisher (February 17, 1879 – November 9, 1958) was an educational reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early decades of the twentieth century. She was named by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the ten most influential women in the United States.[1] In addition to bringing the Montessori method of child-rearing to the United States, she presided over the country's first adult education program, and shaped literary tastes by serving as a member of the Book of the Month Club selection committee from 1925 to 1951.
Biography
A quote by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in the Vermont State House's Hall of Inscriptions discusses her adopted state of Vermont's motto, "Freedom and Unity" – the relationship of individual freedom as balanced with the needs of the community.
Dorothea Frances Canfield - named for Dorothea Brooke of the novel Middlemarch[2] - was born in Lawrence, Kansas, on February 17, 1879. Her father was James Hulme Canfield, president of Ohio State University; her mother, Flavia Camp, was an artist and writer.[3] Canfield Fisher is most closely associated with Vermont, where she spent her adult life, and which served as the setting for many of her books.
In 1899 Dorothy Canfield received a B.A. from Ohio State University. She was also a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. She went on to study Romance languages at University of Paris and Columbia University and in 1904 received a doctoral degree from Columbia;[3] Corneille and Racine in English (1904). With G. R. Carpenter from Columbia she co-wrote English Rhetoric and Composition (1906). The first woman to receive an honorary degree from Dartmouth College, she also received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Smith, Williams, Ohio State University, and the University of Vermont.[4]
Dorothy Canfield Fisher's son, Battalion Surgeon Captain James Fisher, with his comrades during World War II, shortly before he was killed in the Philippines.
In 1907 she married John Redwood Fisher, and together they had two children, a daughter and a son.[3] Her son James became a surgeon and captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. He served with the Alamo Scouts for three months at the end of 1944, following which he was attached to a Ranger unit which carried out the raid to free POWs imprisoned at Cabanatuan in the Philippines. The raid was a great success, with the Rangers suffering only two fatalities. Captain Fisher was one, mortally wounded by a mortar shell. As he lay dying the next day, his last words were "Did we get them all out?"
Children
| Name | Birth | Death | Joined with |
| Sarah Fisher (1909-1978) | |||
| James Canfield Fisher (1913-1945) | |||
In 1911 Canfield Fisher visited the "children's houses" in Rome established by Maria Montessori. Much impressed, she took up the cause of bringing the method back to America by translating Montessori's book into English and writing five of her own: three nonfiction and two novels.[1]
Another concern of Canfield Fisher was her war work. She followed her husband to France in 1916 during World War I, and while raising her young children in Paris worked to establish a Braille press for blinded veterans.[1] She also established a convalescent home for refugee French children from the invaded areas; continuing her relief work after the war, she earned citations from Eleanor Roosevelt among others.[3]
Canfield Fisher died at the age of 79, in Arlington, Vermont, in 1958.[4]
Books
Canfield Fisher spoke five languages fluently, and in addition to writing novels, short stories, memoirs, and educational works, she forayed into literary criticism and translation. For tax purposes her novels were written as "Canfield", her non-fiction as "Fisher".[1]
Her best-known work today is probably Understood Betsy, a children's book about a little orphaned girl who is sent to live with her cousins in Vermont. Though the book can be read purely for pleasure, it also describes a schoolhouse which is run much in the style of the Montessori method.[1]
She also wrote The Bent Twig (1915), Home Fires in France (1918), The Day of Glory (1919), The Brimming Cup (1921), Rough-Hewn (1922) and The Home-Maker (1924), which was reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999. Later novels are Her Son's Wife (1926), The Deepening Stream (1930), Seasoned Timber (1939). A collection of 17 of her stories was Four Square (1949). In all, she wrote 22 novels and 18 works of non-fiction.[4]
William Lyon Phelps comments, "All her novels are autobiographical, being written exclusively out of her own experience and observation."
Legacy
The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award is an award for new American children's books whose winner is chosen by the vote of child readers.[5]
A dormitory at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, is named for Fisher.
References
- ^ a b c d e Wright, Elizabeth J (2007). "Home Economics: Children, Consumption, and Montessori Education in Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Understood Betsy". Children's Literature Association Quarterly 32 (3): 217–230. Retrieved on 2012-12-05.
- ^ Ehrhardt, Julia (2004), "Tourists accommodated, with reservations", Writers of Conviction : The Personal Politics of Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press
- ^ a b c d "Dorothy Canfield Collection". University of Vermont Libraries. 1998. http://cdi.uvm.edu/findingaids/collection/fisherdc.ead.xml. Retrieved 2012-12-05.
- ^ a b c "Biography". The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award. http://www.dcfaward.org/Biography/index.htm. Retrieved June 2, 2010.
- ^ Bang-Jensen, Valerie (2010). "A Children's Choice Program: Insights into Book Selection, Social Relationships, and Reader Identity". Language Arts 87 (3): 169–176. Retrieved on 2012-12-05.
External links
- Works by Dorothy Canfield Fisher listed at The Online Books Page
- Works by Dorothy Canfield at Project Gutenberg
- Inventory of the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Collection, Special Collections, University of Vermont Library
Footnotes (including sources)
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