Metta Victor
American writer (1831-1885)
Metta Victor (née Metta Victoria Fuller; March 2, 1831 – June 26, 1885), who used the pen name Seeley Regester among others, was an American novelist, credited with authoring one of the first detective novels in the United States. She wrote more than 100 dime novels, pioneering the field.
Life
She was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, the third of five children of Adonijah Fuller and Lucy (Williams) Fuller. The family moved to Wooster, Ohio in 1839, where she and her elder sister Frances (who also became a famous writer) attended a female seminary; they both published stories in local newspapers and, later, in the Home Journal. The sisters moved to New York City together in 1848, where they continued their literary pursuits.
Metta married editor and publishing pioneer Orville James Victor in 1856. Her sister Frances would later marry Victor's brother. Metta served as editor for the Beadle & Company monthly Home and for Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and later anonymously published dime novels for her husband's series for Beadle.
She died of cancer on June 26, 1885, in Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey, and was buried in Ridgewood's Valleau Cemetery.
Works
Her noteworthy works are Alice Wilde (1860), an early dime novel; Maum Guinea, and Her Plantation "Children" (1861), expressing abolitionist sentiments; The Dead Letter (1866), the first full-length American work of crime fiction; The Figure Eight (1869); A Bad Boy's Diary (1880); and The Blunders of a Bashful Man (1881).
“Metta Victor” enters the record as american writer (1831-1885). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Metta, Victor and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Metta Victor” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Metta, Victor and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6825451. VIAF identifies the subject as 12550865. The Library of Congress control number is n79043623. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1831, 1885, 1839 and 1848.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metta Victor” 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.