Dorothy Canfield Fisher Biography

American novelist born in Lawrence, Kansas, educated at the University of Nebraska (where she formed an enduring friendship with Willa Cather), Ohio State University, and Columbia University. From 1907 onward she lived in Arlington, Vermont, drawing on its middle-class social milieu in most of her fiction. Her earlier novels, published under her maiden name of Dorothy Canfield, include Gunhild (1907), contrasting Norwegian and American values; The Squirrel-Cage (1912), the first of her treatments of marriage; and The Bent Twig (1915), dealing with tensions between a student and her idealistic parents. While the morality of her fiction is predictably conventional, her work is capable of considerable candour and intensity. Notable among her other novels are The Brimming Cup (1921), in which a woman is torn between her family and love for another man; Her Son's Wife (1926), centring on antipathies between a mother and daughter-in-law; and The Deepening Stream (1930), a partly autobiographical narrative of the growth of a woman's character. Hillsboro People (1915), The Real Motive (1916), and Raw Material (1923) are collections of short stories. Vermont Tradition (1953), a celebration of the history and culture of the region, is the best known of her non-fiction works, which also deal with educational methods and motherhood. There is a biography (1982) by Ida H. Washington.