50 Facts About Fannie Hurst

Fannie Hurst was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were highly popular during the post-World War I era.

Fannie Hurst's work combined sentimental, romantic themes with social issues of the day, such as women's rights and race relations.

Fannie Hurst was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century, and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest-paid American writers.

Fannie Hurst published over 300 short stories during her lifetime.

Fannie Hurst is known for the film adaptations of her works, including Imitation of Life, Four Daughters, Imitation of Life, Humoresque, and Young at Heart.

Fannie Hurst was born on October 19,1885, in Hamilton, Ohio, to shoe-factory owner Samuel Fannie Hurst and his wife Rose, who were assimilated Jewish immigrants from Bavaria.

Fannie Hurst grew up at 5641 Cates Avenue in St Louis, Missouri and was a student at Central High School.

Fannie Hurst attended Washington University and graduated in 1909 at age 24.

Fannie Hurst began to take note of important social issues such as unequal pay and gender inequality.

Fannie Hurst's popularity continued for several decades, only beginning to decline after World War II.

Fannie Hurst was appointed to several committees associated with President Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

In 1912, after numerous rejections, Fannie Hurst finally published a story in The Saturday Evening Post, which shortly thereafter requested exclusive release of her future writings.

Fannie Hurst went on to publish many more stories, mostly in the Post and in Cosmopolitan magazine, eventually earning as much as $5,000 per story.

Fannie Hurst's works were designed to appeal primarily to a female audience, and usually had working-class or middle-class female protagonists concerned with romantic relationships and economic need.

Fannie Hurst was strongly influenced by the works of Edgar Lee Masters, particularly Spoon River Anthology.

Fannie Hurst had read and learned from the works of Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, and Thomas Hardy.

Fannie Hurst considered herself to be a serious writer, and publicly disparaged the works of other popular authors such as Gene Stratton-Porter and Harold Bell Wright, dismissing Wright as a "sentimental" author whose works people read only for "relaxation".

Fannie Hurst became a favorite target of parodists, including Langston Hughes, who parodied her racially themed novel Imitation of Life as Limitations of Life.

Fannie Hurst was called the "Queen of the Sob Sisters".

The great popularity of Fannie Hurst's works gave her major celebrity status.

Fannie Hurst took steps to publicize herself for purposes of promoting both her writing and the activist causes she espoused.

Fannie Hurst was frequently interviewed about her views on subjects relating to love, marriage and family.

For decades, The New York Times continued to report regularly on Fannie Hurst's doings, including her walks in Central Park with her dogs, her travels abroad, her wardrobe, and the interior decoration of her apartment.

Fannie Hurst continued to write and publish until her death in 1968, although the commercial value of her work declined after World War II as popular tastes changed.

In 1921, Fannie Hurst was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names.

Fannie Hurst was a member of the feminist intellectual group Heterodoxy in Greenwich Village, and was active in the Urban League.

Fannie Hurst volunteered as a regular visitor to inmates of a women's prison in Manhattan.

Fannie Hurst's attitude changed in the 1950s, and in 1963 she received an honorary award from the Zionist women's organization Hadassah.

Fannie Hurst was a delegate to the World Health Organization in 1952.

In 1958, Fannie Hurst briefly hosted a television talk show out of New York called Showcase.

Fannie Hurst was praised by early homophile group the Mattachine Society, which invited Fannie Hurst to deliver the keynote address at the Society's 1958 convention.

In 1915, Hurst secretly married Jacques S Danielson, a Russian emigre pianist.

Fannie Hurst kept her maiden name and the couple maintained separate residences and arranged to renew their marriage contract every five years, if they both agreed to do so.

Fannie Hurst responded by saying that a married woman had the right to retain her own name, her own special life, and her personal liberty.

In 1958, Fannie Hurst published her autobiography, Anatomy of Me, which described many of her friendships and encounters with famous people of the era such as Theodore Dreiser and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Overweight as a child and young woman, Fannie Hurst had a lifelong concern about her weight.

Fannie Hurst was known in literary circles as an avid dieter and published an autobiographical memoir about her dieting, No Food With My Meals, in 1935.

Fannie Hurst died on February 23,1968, at her Hotel des Artistes apartment in Manhattan, after a brief illness.

Fannie Hurst's obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.

For readers unfamiliar with city life, Fannie Hurst's experiences allowed her to create accurate depictions of contemporaneous New York City and, in her later works, the Midwest.

Fannie Hurst often dealt with subject matter considered "daringly frank and earthy" for its time, including unwed pregnancy, extramarital affairs, miscegnation, and homosexuality.

Women in Fannie Hurst's works are generally victimized in some way by preconceived attitudes or social and economic discrimination.

The women's situations are frequently made worse by their own passivity, a trait Fannie Hurst deplored; a happy ending often either does not occur, or occurs because of outside forces rather than the afflicted woman's own efforts.

Fannie Hurst focused on describing the "interior lives of women" and how the life choices of her female characters are driven by feelings and passions that they often cannot articulate or explain.

In 1964, Fannie Hurst established her archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin with the assistance of her friend, the noted civil rights lawyer Morris Ernst.

At the time of her death, and for several decades thereafter, Fannie Hurst was treated as a popular culture writer, credited with having "set the style followed by Jacqueline Susann, Judith Krantz, and Jackie Collins" and considered "one of the great trash novelists".

Fannie Hurst's works fell into obscurity and largely went out of print.

Fannie Hurst has been called a pioneer in the field of public relations due to her development of her own strong public persona.

Fannie Hurst was a strong advocate for women maintaining independence their whole lives, even after marriage.

Fannie Hurst has been referenced in popular culture to exemplify a popular or lowbrow author, in contrast to serious, literary authors.