Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968)

Edna Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Mich., Aug. 15, 1885, the daughter of a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Ferber, and his Milwaukee-born wife, Julia Neumann Ferber. In some sources, perhaps because of vanity, she claimed to have been born in 1887, but census documents show otherwise. She spent her early years in Chicago and Ottumwa, Iowa. At age 12, she moved to Appleton, Wis., where her father ran a general store called My Store. She expressed her writing talents early as "personal and local" editor of her high school newspaper, the Ryan Clarion. When she graduated from Ryan High, her senior essay so impressed the editor of the Appleton Daily Crescent that he offered her a job as a reporter at age 17, for the salary of $3.00 per week. Limited by family finances from pursuing her real dream -- studying at Northwestern University's School of Elocution for a career on stage -- she took the job.

After being fired by the Crescent, she went on to write for the Milwaukee Journal, where she worked so hard that one day she collapsed in exhaustion. While home in Appleton recuperating from anemia, she wrote her first short story and her first novel. In 1910, Everybody's Magazine published the short story, The Homely Heroine, set in Appleton. Her novel, Dawn O'Hara, the story of a newspaperwoman in Milwaukee, followed in 1911.

She gained national attention for her series of Emma McChesney stories, tales of a traveling underskirt saleswoman that were published in national magazines. She wrote 30 Emma stories before finally refusing to do any more. Her first play, Our Mrs. McChesney, was produced in 1915, starring Ethel Barrymore.

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http://www.apl.org/history/ferber/edna.bio.html

Grace Livingston Hill (April 16, 1865 – 1947)

Grace Livingston Hill (1865-1947) was born on April 16, 1865 to a Presbyterian Minister, Charles and a published author, Marcia Macdonald, in Wellsville, New York. She was an early 20th century "Christian Romance" novelist. She was immensely popular in the time that she wrote, contributing hundreds of novels and short stories during her lifetime. Her characters were most often young female ingénues, frequently strong Christian women or those who become so within the confines of the story.

Hill's messages are quite simplistic in nature: good versus evil. As Hill believed the Bible was very clear about what was good and what was evil in life, she reflected that cut-and-dried design in her own works. She wrote about a variety of different subjects, almost always with a romance worked into the message and often essential to the return to grace on the part of one or several characters.

If her clear-cut descriptions of evil in man and woman were Ms. Hill’s primary subjects in her novels, a secondary subject would always be God’s ability to restore. Grace touched on subjects such as infidelity, defiance, hard-heartedness towards God, and deception, to name just a few. Grace wrote about them all and could manage a happy, or at least satisfactory, ending to any situation. Jesus, the ever-present (though unseen) recurring character, manages to heal or mend any situation Grace imagined.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Livingston_Hill

Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968)

Edna Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Mich., Aug. 15, 1885, the daughter of a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Ferber, and his Milwaukee-born wife, Julia Neumann Ferber. In some sources, perhaps because of vanity, she claimed to have been born in 1887, but census documents show otherwise. She spent her early years in Chicago and Ottumwa, Iowa. At age 12, she moved to Appleton, Wis., where her father ran a general store called My Store. She expressed her writing talents early as "personal and local" editor of her high school newspaper, the Ryan Clarion. When she graduated from Ryan High, her senior essay so impressed the editor of the Appleton Daily Crescent that he offered her a job as a reporter at age 17, for the salary of $3.00 per week. Limited by family finances from pursuing her real dream -- studying at Northwestern University's School of Elocution for a career on stage -- she took the job.

After being fired by the Crescent, she went on to write for the Milwaukee Journal, where she worked so hard that one day she collapsed in exhaustion. While home in Appleton recuperating from anemia, she wrote her first short story and her first novel. In 1910, Everybody's Magazine published the short story, The Homely Heroine, set in Appleton. Her novel, Dawn O'Hara, the story of a newspaperwoman in Milwaukee, followed in 1911.

She gained national attention for her series of Emma McChesney stories, tales of a traveling underskirt saleswoman that were published in national magazines. She wrote 30 Emma stories before finally refusing to do any more. Her first play, Our Mrs. McChesney, was produced in 1915, starring Ethel Barrymore.

( Read more... )

http://www.apl.org/history/ferber/edna.bio.html

Grace Livingston Hill (April 16, 1865 – 1947)

Grace Livingston Hill (1865-1947) was born on April 16, 1865 to a Presbyterian Minister, Charles and a published author, Marcia Macdonald, in Wellsville, New York. She was an early 20th century "Christian Romance" novelist. She was immensely popular in the time that she wrote, contributing hundreds of novels and short stories during her lifetime. Her characters were most often young female ingénues, frequently strong Christian women or those who become so within the confines of the story.

Hill's messages are quite simplistic in nature: good versus evil. As Hill believed the Bible was very clear about what was good and what was evil in life, she reflected that cut-and-dried design in her own works. She wrote about a variety of different subjects, almost always with a romance worked into the message and often essential to the return to grace on the part of one or several characters.

If her clear-cut descriptions of evil in man and woman were Ms. Hill’s primary subjects in her novels, a secondary subject would always be God’s ability to restore. Grace touched on subjects such as infidelity, defiance, hard-heartedness towards God, and deception, to name just a few. Grace wrote about them all and could manage a happy, or at least satisfactory, ending to any situation. Jesus, the ever-present (though unseen) recurring character, manages to heal or mend any situation Grace imagined.

( Read more... )

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Livingston_Hill