Dorothy Canfield Fisher
1879–1958 · American author, educator and reformer whose children's novel Understood Betsy promoted Montessori-style learning.
Dorothy Canfield was born in 1879 in Lawrence, Kansas, where her father was a university professor; he later became president of Ohio State University. She studied at Ohio State, the Sorbonne in Paris and Columbia University, where she earned a doctorate in French in 1904. In 1907 she married John Redwood Fisher and moved to the family farm in Arlington, Vermont. In 1911 she visited Maria Montessori in Rome and wrote books introducing Montessori's methods of education to Americans. Her children's novel Understood Betsy (1916) tells of a timid orphan girl who learns independence after she is sent to live with relatives on a Vermont farm. During the First World War she did relief work in France, including running a braille press for blinded soldiers. She wrote many novels and short stories, served for many years on the selection board of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and promoted adult education. Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the most influential women in the country. She died in Arlington in 1958.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia
Key dates
- 1879 Born in Lawrence, Kansas
- 1904 Doctorate from Columbia University
- 1911 Visits Maria Montessori in Rome
- 1916 Understood Betsy published
- 1958 Dies in Arlington, Vermont
Record-breaker
Firsts and records, worded as the sources give them ("first known", "at the time").
- She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Dartmouth College. (Source: Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Wikipedia))
Read about them
Grades 3–5
- Understood Betsy · In the library
More lives
Marguerite de Angeli · Richard and Florence Atwater · Mariano Azuela · Samuel Beckett · W. E. B. Du Bois · Bertolt Brecht