Frances Miriam Whitcher
American humorist
Frances Miriam Berry Whitcher (1 November 1811–4 January 1852) was an American humorist, born in Whitestown, New York. Whitcher may have been the first significant woman prose humorist in the United States.
Early life
Frances Miriam Berry was born November 1, 1811, in Whitestown, Oneida County, New York. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Wells and innkeeper Lewis Berry. From a young age she was observed to have talent for writing and drawing.
Writing
Whitcher contributed poems to the Saturday Gazette and Godey's Lady's Book during the 1840s. Her humorous creation, the comic fool the Widow Bedott (1856), made her a celebrity, and sold 100,000 copies during the decade following its publication. Whitcher used her characters to satirize gentility, including issues such as fashion, social status, courtship, and hypocrisy. In 1855, The Widow Bedott Papers was gathered from her writings and published in book form, featuring the Widow Bedott. Afterwards, David R. Locke fashioned a coarsely amusing play starring Bedott.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frances Miriam Whitcher” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.