Helen Hooven Santmyer
Helen Hooven Santmyer was an American author born on November 25, 1895, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She spent her formative years in Xenia, Ohio, where her family background included a father involved in various professions and a mother who graduated from art school. Santmyer excelled academically, graduating at the top of her class from Wellesley College in 1918 and later earning a B.Litt from Oxford University in 1927. Throughout her career, she held various positions in education and library services, simultaneously nurturing her passion for writing, primarily focused on life in small Midwestern towns.
Although her first novel, "Herbs and Apples," was published in 1925, it was her later work, "And Ladies of the Club," published in 1982, that garnered significant recognition. The latter became a bestselling novel and was notable for its extensive length, originally exceeding 1,900 pages. Despite facing various health challenges throughout her life, including serious illnesses and injuries, Santmyer continued to write and received numerous accolades for her contributions to literature. She passed away in Xenia on February 21, 1996, leaving behind a legacy that celebrates a nostalgic view of American life and the resilience of pursuing one’s passion well into old age.
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Subject Terms
Helen Hooven Santmyer
Writer
- Born: November 25, 1895
- Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio
- Died: February 21, 1986
- Place of death: Xenia, Ohio
Biography
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 25, 1895, Helen Hooven Santmyer was the daughter of Joseph Wright and Bertha Hooven Santmyer. Her father held different jobs while she grew up in Xenia, Ohio, including selling pharmaceuticals and working for Greene County. Her mother, an art school graduate, was a homemaker. Xenia was the place Santmyer called home.
Santmyer graduated in 1918 from Wellesley College with a B.A. in English at the top of her class. She later traveled to England to study and in 1927 received a B.Litt from Oxford University. After her graduation from Wellesley, Santmyer worked in New York as a secretary to the editor of Scribner’s Magazine from 1919 to 1921. She taught English at Xenia High School from 1921 to 1922; worked in the English department of Wellesley from 1922 to 1924; served as dean of women and chair of the English department at Cedarville College, Cedarville, Ohio; and was a librarian in two different Ohio library systems until her retirement in 1959.
A lifelong reader and writer, Santmyer saw herself as another Louisa May Alcott. Her original reason for going to college was to further her writing career. During her years of employment, Santmyer wrote essays and stories primarily about people from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries who lived in small towns in the Midwest. However, most of her writing was not published.
Santmyer’s literary output was small. Her first novel, Herbs and Apples (1925), is semiautobiographical and presents an idyllic portrait of life. Her other works also celebrate the glories of a simple, idyllic lifestyle. Santmyer’s health, however, was anything but idyllic. As a teenager, she suffered from typhoid fever. As an adult, she suffered from undulant fever that left her with lifelong digestive problems. She also suffered from emphysema due to a lifetime of smoking, injured her spinal cord in a serious fall when she was in her sixties, was arthritic, and in her later years was blind in one eye.
Santmyer spent twenty years writing and editing .. . And Ladies of the Club, her most famous work, published in 1982 by the Ohio State University Press. The novel was a Book-of-the- Month Club main selection after Putnam brought out an edition in 1984. The book also was on The New York Times best-seller list for nine months. Santmyer’s original manuscript was more than 1,900 pages long; she pared more than six hundred pages before the Ohio State University Press published a first edition, but at 1,300 pages the novel was still longer than average.
Santmyer was ninety years old when she died in Xenia on February 21, 1896. During her lifetime, she received several honors for her writing, including an award from the Ohioana Library Association in 1964, the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction in 1983, an honorary doctorate of humanities from Wright State University in 1984, and the Ohio’s Governor’s Award in 1985. In 1984, she was also named to the Women’s Hall of Fame of Greene County and the State of Ohio. The Ohio State University in Columbus has Santmyer’s papers and letters. Santmyer is remembered primarily for her depiction of an earlier, idyllic America and for her perseverance in becoming a famous writer in her eighties.