Lifespan: 1830-1922
Nationality: American
Genres: Romantic
Types of Work: Novels
Contemporaries:
Other Names: Marion Harland
Style: Brilliant descriptions, flowing dialogue
Bio:
(From Wikipedia)
Mary Virginia Terhune (née Hawes, December 21, 1830 – June 3, 1922), also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author. She began her career writing articles at the age of 14, using various pennames until 1853, when she settled on Marion Harland. Her first novel Alone was published in 1854 and would go on to sell over 100,000 copies. For fifteen years she was a prolific writer of best-selling women's fiction novels, as well as writing numerous serial works, short stories, and essays for magazines. After marrying Presbyterian minister Edward Payson Terhune in 1856, Terhune had six children, though three died as infants. In the 1870s, shortly after the birth of her last son Albert Payson, she broke from her novel writing and published Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery, a cookbook and domestic guide for housewives.
Though Terhune continued writing novels, she began to concentrate primarily on non-fiction, publishing additional cookbooks and domestic works, as well as biographies, travel guides, and histories. She also spoke as a public lecturer and was the first woman elected to the Virginia Historical Society. In 1873, the Terhunes relocated to Europe for two years while Mary recovered from tuberculosis. After their return, they continued living in the northeastern United States, moving as her husband's job demanded.
After breaking her wrist in her seventies, Terhune learned to use a typewriter. In her 90s, she went blind, but continued work by dictating to a secretary. Her final work, the novel The Carringtons of High Hill, was published in 1919. Terhune continued creating articles and essays until she died on June 2, 1922. Over her life, she published 25 novels, 25 non-fiction works on homemaking and cooking, three short story collections, several biographies, travel guides and histories, and numerous essays, articles, and serial works. Two of her children, Christine Terhune Herrick and Albert Payson Terhune, became noted writers as well, with Herrick's following in her mother's footsteps as an authority of domestic matters, and Albert Terhune's becoming notable for his novels featuring collies. Her third child, Virginia Van de Water, also became a writer, though less well known. Late in life, Mary Terhune co-wrote works with each of them.
Terhune's first writings, written under a more masculine pseudonym when she was 14, were evangelical essays for the Watchman and Observer, a weekly religious paper. Starting with the publication of her first novel, Alone, in 1955, she became one of the top-selling authors of women's fiction. Her early novels all featured a romantic story element, with many also including "sensational episodes-murders, fires, accidents, and sudden deaths." The works explored a variety of topics, with earlier works looking at the "domestic and religious lives of young women" and later works delving into depravity, alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness. Literary critics considered her to be a "plantation novelist" at the time. More recently, critics have appraised her differently, noting that Terhune set several novels outside of the South, including two set in New York. They also noted that she was critical of various social institutions considered acceptable in the South, including slavery and marriages between close relatives.
After her shift in the 1870s to more non-fiction works, her occasional novels and short stories continued to examine contemporary issues women dealt with in their daily lives. Some of her best-known works in this period included The Hidden Path and Sunnybank. While other of her novels she wrote during this time were criticized for lacking believability and drawing out the heroine's suffering, Terhune is considered always to have "told a good story". Her first fourteen novels were reprinted and continued to be top sellers well after her own death in the early twentieth century.
Terhune well understood the literary market and how to write what would sell to her audience. Her shift to non-fiction in the 1870s came after the end of the Civil War, when the demand for women's fiction began to drop. With her new domestic writings, she appealed to inexperienced young housewives' need to know how to cook, and to manage their households and staff. Her recipe books included a range of styles of dishes from around the country, that also responded to the differing resources of her readers. Once her domestic authority was established, Terhune became a Chautauqua lecturer, speaking primarily to women on topics of home and family. By the 1890s, her name guaranteed high sales, and she explored other genres, including biographies, travel books, and histories, noted for being mostly opinion pieces with little research behind them. Toward the end of her life, Terhune wrote a syndicated advice column.
Novels:
Alone (1854)
The Hidden Path (1855)
''Moss Side[5] (1857)
Mariam (1862)
Marriage Through Prudential Reasons (published anonymously)
Colonel Floyd's Wards (1866)
Sunnybank (1866)
Ruby's Husband (1868)
Phemie's Temptation (1869)
True as Steel (1872)
Jessamine: A Novel (1873)
Judith, A Chronicle of Old Virginia (1883)
Mr. Wayt's Wife's Sister (1984)
With the Best Intensions (1890)
His Great Self (1892)
The Royal Road; or, Taking Him at His Word (1894)
When Grandmamma was New: The Story of a Virginia Childhood (1899)
Literary Hearthstones (1902)
The Distractions of Martha (1906)
The Carringtons of High Hill (1919