Fannie Hurst

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Fannie Hurst in 1932, portrait by Carl Van Vechten.

Fannie Hurst (October 19, 1889 - February 23, 1968) was an American novelist. Some of her more famous novels were Stardust (1919), Lummox (1923), A President is Born (1927), and Imitation of Life (1933).

She was born in Hamilton, Ohio to a Jewish family. She was an only child, her parents were fairly well-to-do and she spent the first twenty years of her life in St. Louis. Went to Washington University in St. Louis and graduated in 1909. In 1915 she married Jacques S. Danielson of New York, a pianist, but the marriage was not announced until five years later.

In 1921, Hurst was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names. She was active in the Urban League, and was appointed to the National Advisory Committee to the Works Progress Administration in 1940. She was also a delegate to the World Health Organization in 1952.

Her novels are not well remembered today, and she is best known for screen adaptation of her works such as Imitation of Life. F. Scott Fitzgerald presciently described her as one of several authors "not producing among 'em one story or novel that will last 10 years." The first full biography of Hurst was published in 1999 by Brooke Kroeger.