KEEPING FIRES NIGHT AND DAY by Dorothy Canfield, Mark J. Madigan (Editor), Mark J. Madigan ( 9780826208842 )

Item Details

Title:

KEEPING FIRES NIGHT AND DAY
SELECTED LETTERS OF DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

By:

Dorothy Canfield, Mark J. Madigan (Editor), Mark J. Madigan

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£57.50
We believe that this item is permanently unavailable, and so we cannot source it.

ISBN 10:

0826208843

ISBN 13:

9780826208842

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS

Pub. date:

1 May, 1993

Pages:

368

Description:

This collection of letters illuminates the life of Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who was an assertive member of the Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee (helping to define American literary taste for over 30 years), a best-selling author, and a committed social activist.

Synopsis:

Eleanor Roosevelt called her one of the most influential women in America. Among the earliest and most assertive members of the Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee, Dorothy Canfield Fisher helped define literary taste in America for more than three decades. She helped shape the careers of such famous writers as Pearl Buck, Isak Dinesen, and Richard Wright. A best-selling author herself, Fisher was also a deeply committed social activist. In Keeping Fires Night and Day, Mark J. Madigan collects much of Fisher's copious correspondence. With letters to Willa Cather, W. E. B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, James Thurber, and E. B. White, this volume documents Fisher's personal and professional life and career in a way that no biography could. Set against the American historical and cultural landscape from 1900 to 1958, these letters offer a firsthand account of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women. Fisher's life was anything but conventional. When her best-selling novels made her the chief breadwinner in her marriage, her husband, John Fisher, assumed the role of secretary and editor of her work. Fluent in five languages, Dorothy Canfield Fisher founded a Braille press in France and introduced the educational methods of Dr. Maria Montessori to the United States. She became a pioneering advocate of adult education and served as the first woman on the Vermont Board of Education. In letters to friends, fans, and colleagues, Fisher discussed her homelife, her work, and the world around her. Her passions and concerns - revealed in her correspondence with wit and poignancy - include the "New Woman" and the suffrage movement, racial discrimination andthe emergence of the NAACP the development of a national education system, two world wars, the depression, and the influence of book clubs in the literary marketplace. Dorothy Canfield Fisher "helped twentieth-century American literature to come of age, " writes Clifton Fadiman i

Illustrations:

11 illustrations, bibliography, chronology, index

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Missouri Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

BENT TWIG (DODO PRESS)

BRIMMING CUP

HILLSBORO PEOPLE

HILLSBORO PEOPLE (HB)