Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (née Metta Victoria Fuller; nom de plume Seeley Regester) (March 2, 1831 – June 26, 1885) was an American novelist, credited with authoring of one of the first detective novels in the United States. She wrote more than 100 dime novels, pioneering the field.[1]
She was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, the third of five children of Adonijah Fuller and Lucy (Williams) Fuller.[2] The family moved to Wooster, Ohio in 1839, where she and her elder sister Frances (who also became a famous writer) attended a female seminary; they both published stories in local newspapers and, later, in the Home Journal. The sisters moved to New York City together in 1848, where they continued their literary pursuits.[3]
Metta married editor and publishing pioneer Orville James Victor, a brother of her sister Frances' husband,[4] in 1856. She served as editor for the Beadle & Company monthly Home and for Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and later anonymously published dime novels for her husband's series for Beadle.[3]
She died of cancer on June 26, 1885, in Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey, and was buried in Ridgewood's Valleau Cemetery.[1]
Her noteworthy works are Alice Wilde (1860), the first dime novel; Maum Guinea, and Her Plantation "Children" (1861), expressing abolitionist sentiments; The Dead Letter (1866), the first full-length American work of crime fiction;[1] The Figure Eight (1869); A Bad Boy's Diary (1880); and The Blunders of a Bashful Man (1881).
She also wrote under the names Corinne Cushman, Eleanor Lee Edwards, Metta Fuller, Walter T. Gray, Mrs. Orrin James, Rose Kennedy, Louis LeGrand, Mrs. Mark Peabody, The Singing Sybil, Mrs. Henry Thomas.[5]
References
- 1 2 3 Orso, Miranda (2002). "Victor, Metta Victoria Fuller". Retrieved 2013-11-04.
- ↑ from Beadle and Adams Dime Novel Digitization Project
- 1 2 "Metta Victoria Fuller Victor". Britannica.
- ↑ Morris, William A. (1 Dec 1902). "Historian of the Northwest. A Woman Who Loved Oregon: Frances Fuller Victor". The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society. 3. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
- ↑ http://chnm.gmu.edu/dimenovels/the-authors/metta-victor
External links
- Foxwell, Elizabeth, "Metta Fuller Victor: A Sensational Life", Mystery Scene, no. 81 (2003).
- Works by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Metta Victoria Fuller Victor at Internet Archive
- Works by or about Seeley Regester at Internet Archive
- Miranda Orso, Summer 2002: Bio from Pennsylvania Center for the Book
- Bio from American Women's Dime Novel Project