1879-1958 · American novelist and educational reformer who wrote about rural Vermont
About Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958), who signed her early fiction Dorothy Canfield, was an American novelist and educational reformer who lived most of her adult life in Arlington, Vermont. She wrote A Montessori Mother (1912) after visiting Maria Montessori's schools in Rome, served for many years on the selection committee of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and made rural Vermont the setting of much of her fiction.
1917 (serialized 1916) · Early 20th Century · Novel
Understood Betsy follows nine-year-old Elizabeth Ann, an orphan raised in a medium-sized Midwestern city by her Great-aunt Harriet and Aunt Frances, a piano teacher who has studied child-rearing books and correspondence courses and is determined that her niece shall be thoroughly understood. Elizabeth Ann is thin, pale and frightened of dogs, thunder and examinations, and Aunt Frances shares and rehearses every fear with her.