It’s the birthday of an author said by Eleanor Roosevelt to be “one of the ten most influential women in the United States,” Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958), who brought the Montessori Method to the U.S., wrote 40 books of fiction and nonfiction, and most importantly wrote one of my all-time favorite children’s novels, Understood Betsy (1917).

Dorothea Frances Canfield was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and named for Dorothea from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which right up front tells you something about her parents. Her father was a professor at the University of Kansas and her mother was an artist/writer. Her father went on to be the president of The Ohio State University, so go Bucks, woot-woot, O-H, and all that.

Canfield Fisher got her B.A. from OSU in 1899 and went on to get a doctorate from Columbia University, where her father was by then librarian. (Is that a step up or down from president of OSU? Discuss.) Canfield Fisher married John Redwood Fisher in 1907 (they went on to have two children) and that same year published her first novel, Gunhild. In addition to being a prolific writer, Canfield Fisher was busy in Paris with war relief work during WWI and with establishing the first adult education program in the U.S., working for rehabilitation/reform in women’s prisons, heading a committee to pardon conscientious objectors in 1921, serving as a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee for many years, and receiving a pantload of honorary degrees from the likes of Dartmouth, Swartmore, Smith, Williams, and so on.

In 1957, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award was established in Vermont, where Canfield Fisher spent most of her adult life (and located much of her fiction). The winner of the award is established via a vote by the state’s 4th through 8th graders. But in 2020 the award will be renamed, due to the claims of educator Judy Dow that Canfield Fisher had ties to the eugenics movement in Vermont. Dow also objects to some of Canfield Fisher’s characterizations of French Canadians and Native Americans. But a strong tie to the eugenics movement has not been established. Life is complicated.

Canfield Fisher died at 79 in Vermont.

Have a beautiful Monday, if you haven’t read the funny and delightful Understood Betsy (about a young girl who goes from a city aunt who teaches her to fear dogs and school and illnesses and all of life to a sensible country aunt and uncle under whose care she becomes stronger, happier, and more independent) then by all means rush out and procure a copy, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.