Jean Webster

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Alice Jane Chandler Webster

Pseudonym: Jean Webster
Born: 1876-07-24
Fredonia, New York
Died: 1916-06-11
New York, New York
Occupation: novelist and playwright
Nationality: American
Writing period: 1899-1916
Genres: Fiction

Jean Webster (pseudonym for Alice Jane Chandler Webster) was born July 24, 1876 and died June 11, 1916. She was an American writer and author of many books including Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy.

Contents

[edit] Childhood

Alice Jane Chandler Webster was born in Fredonia, New York. She was the eldest child of Annie Moffet Webster and Charles Luther Webster. She lived her early childhood in a strongly matriarchial and activist setting, with her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother all living under the same roof. Her great-grandmother worked on temperance issues and her grandmother on racial equality and women's suffrage.[1]
Alice's mother was niece to Mark Twain and her father was Twain's business manager and subsequently publisher of many of his books through the Charles L. Webster Publishing founded in 1884. Initially the business was successful, and when Alice was five the family moved to a large brownstone in New York, with a summer house in Long Island. However, the business ran into difficulties, and the relationship with Mark Twain increasingly broke down. The family moved back to Fredonia in 1888 as her father had a breakdown and took a leave of absence. He subsequently committed suicide in 1891 from a drug overdose.[1]
Alice attended the Fredonia Normal School and graduated in 1894 in china painting. From 1894-1896, she attended the Lady Jane Grey School in Binghamton, New York as a boarder. During her time there, the school taught academics, music, art, letter-writing, diction and manners to about 20 boarders. The Lady Jane Grey School inspired many of the details of the school in Webster's novel Just Patty, including the layout of the school, the names of rooms (Sky Parlour, Paradise Alley), uniforms, and the girls' daily schedule and teachers. It was at the school that Alice became known as Jean. Since her roommate was also called Alice, the school asked if could use another name. She chose "Jean", a variation on her middle name. Jean graduated from the school in June 1896 and returned to the Fredonia Normal School for a year in the college division.[1]

[edit] College Years

In 1897, Webster entered Vassar College as a member of the class of 1901. Her experiences at Vassar provided material for her books When Patty Went to College and Daddy-Long-Legs. Webster began a close friendship with the future poet Adelaide Crapsey who remained as her friend until Crapsey's death in 1914.[1]

Vassar College in ca 1862

Majoring in English and economics, she took a course in welfare and penal reform and became interested in social issues.[1] As part of her course she visited institutions for "deliquent and destitute children".[2] She became involved in the College Settlement House that served poorer communities in New York, an interest she would maintain throughout her life. She participated with Crapsey in many extracurricular activities, including writing, drama, and politics. Webster and Crapsey supported the socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs during the 1900 presidential election, although as women they were not allowed to vote. She was a contributor of stories to the Vassar Miscellany[2] and as part of her sophomore year English class, she began writing a weekly column of Vassar news and stories for the Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier.[1] She was "a shark in English" but her spelling was reportedly quite eccentric, and when a horrified teacher asked her authority for a spelling error, she reported "Webster", a play on name of the dictionary of the same name.[1][2]


Webster spent a semester in her junior year in Europe, visiting France and the United Kingdom, but with Italy as the main destination, including visits to Rome, Naples, Venice and Florence. She traveled with two other Vassar students, but in Paris met two other Americans Ethelyn McKinney and Lena Weinstein, who were to become lifelong friends. While in Italy, Webster researched her senior economics thesis "Pauperism in Italy". She also wrote columns about her travels for the Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier, and gathered material for a short shory, Villa Gianini, which was published in the Vassar Miscellany in 1901. She later expanded it into one of her novels The Wheat Princess. Returning to Vassar for her senior year, she was literary editor for her class yearbook, and graduated in June 1901.[1]

[edit] Adult Years

Back in Fredonia, Webster began writing When Patty Went to College, in which she described contemporary women's college life. After some struggles finding a publisher, it was issued in March 1903 to good reviews. Webster started writing the stories that would make up Much Ado about Peter, and with her mother visited Italy for the winter of 1903-4 including a 6-week stay in a convent in Palestrina, while she wrote the Wheat Princess. It was subsequently published in 1905.[1]
The subsequent years brought a further trip to Italy, and an eight month world tour to Egypt, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China and Japan with Ethelyn McKinney, Lena Weinstein and two others, as well as the publication of Jerry Junior in 1907 and The Four Pools Mystery in 1908.[1]
An increasing intimacy and a secret engagement had developed between Webster and Ethelyn McKinney's brother Glenn Ford McKinney. A lawyer, he had struggled to live up to the expectations of his wealthy and successful father. Mirroring a subplot of Dear Enemy, he had an unhappy marriage to an unstable woman, Annette Reynaud, who was frequently hospitalized for manic-depression episodes. The McKinneys had a child, John, who also showed signs of mental instability. McKinney responded to these stresses and frequent escapes on hunting trips and yachting as well as alcohol abuse. He entered sanatoriums on several occasions as a result. The McKinneys separated in 1909, but in an era when divorce was uncommon and difficult to obtain, were not divorced until 1915. After his separation, McKinney continued to have struggles with alcohol abuse, but by 1912 had his addiction under control and he traveled with Webster, Ethelyn McKinney and Lena Weinstein to Ireland in the summer of 1912.[1]
During this period, Webster continued to write short stories and began adapting some of her books for the stage. In 1911, Just Patty was published and Webster began writing the novel Daddy-Long-Legs while staying at an old farmhouse in Tyringham, Massachusetts. Webster's most famous work was originally published as a serial in the Ladies' Home Journal and tells the story of a girl named Jerusha Abbott, an orphan whose attendance at a women's college is sponsored by an anonymous benefactor. Apart from an introductory chapter, the novel takes the form of letters written by the newly-styled Judy to her benefactor. It was published in October 1912 to popular and critical acclaim.[1]
Webster dramatized Daddy-Long-Legs during 1913, and in 1914 spent four months on tour with the play, which starred a young Ruth Chatterton as Judy. After try outs in Atlantic City, Washington, Syracuse, Rochester, Indianopolis and Chicago, the play opened at the Gaiety Theatre, Broadway in September 1914 and ran until May 1915. It subsequently toured widely through the US. However, her triumph and success was overshadowed by her college friend Adelaide Crapsey's long struggle with tuberculosis and her subsequent death in October 1914.
The book and play became a focus for efforts for charitable work and reform. "Daddy-Long-Legs" dolls were sold to raise money to fund the adoption of orphans into families.
In June 1915 Glenn Ford McKinney was granted a divorce, and he and Webster married in a quiet ceremony in September in Washington, Connecticut. They honeymooned at McKinney's camp near Quebec City, Canada, and were visited by former president Theodore Roosevelt,[3] who invited himself, saying "I've always wanted to meet Jean Webster. We can put up a partition in the cabin".[1]
Returning to the US, the newlyweds shared Webster's apartment overlooking Central Park and McKinney's Tymor farm, in Dutchess County, New York. In November 1915, Dear Enemy, a sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, was published, and also proved a bestseller. Also epistolary in form, it chronicles the adventures of a college friend of Judy's who becomes the superindendent of the orphanage in which Judy was raised.[1]

[edit] Death

Jean Webster died 9 hours after giving a birth to a daughter in June 1916. Her daughter was named Jean after her.

[edit] Bibliography

Compiled from the Library of Congress's catalog:

[edit] Biography

Simpson, Alan; Mary Simpson with Ralph Connor (1984). Jean Webster: Storyteller. Poughkeepsie: Tymor Associates. Library of Congress Catalog Number 84-50869. 

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Simpson, Alan; Mary Simpson with Ralph Connor (1984). Jean Webster: Storyteller. Poughkeepsie: Tymor Associate. B0006EFCTE Library of Congress Catalog Number 84-50869. 
  2. ^ a b c Jean, Webster (1940). Daddy-Long-Legs. New York, NY: Grosset and Dunlap, "Introduction: Jean Webster" pages 11-19. ASIN: B000GQOF3G. 
  3. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1916). A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open. New York: Charles Scribner’s sons. 

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