Julia Palmer Smith (1818 – 1883) wrote ten popular 19th century women’s novels, in addition to sketches and serialized novels, earning enough to help buy land for her family near Hartford, Connecticut. More than 28,000 copies of her books sold during Julie’s lifetime, earning her an average of $500 per year (about $12,000 today).
She wrote those books after raising four daughters nearly alone in Hartford; her husband, the youngest of many brothers, was obligated to spend most of each year in New Orleans anchoring that branch of the family saddlery business.
Julie Smith’s year of birth (1818) places her among the first wave of American authors to make a living writing, along with Harriet Beecher Stowe (born 1811), Sara Parton (aka Fanny Fern, 1811), Henry David Thoreau (1817), E.D.E.N. Southworth, Susan Warner, and Herman Melville (all born in 1819).
Julia was friends and neighbors with the Hartford writers Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Jane Holmes, Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain.
In the 1870s women wrote nearly three-quarters of all the novels published. American women read and wrote in record numbers, dominating the literary market. Between The Widow Goldsmith’s Daughter in 1869 and the publication of her tenth novel, Blossom Bud in 1883, Julie wrote more than 3,500 pages.
Let’s just pause to appreciate for a moment that these were all hand-written pages, and after each draft was edited, Julie (and other writers) then had to produce (by hand) what was called a “Fair Copy” for the publishers to work with. Julie often spoke of aching arms, and wrapping her writing arm tightly in cold, wet towels.
More than 28,300 copies of her books were sold during Julie’s lifetime. Below is a list of her novels and, when I could find them, links to the actual texts. Soon I will post a Reader's guide to the novels -- I'm still reading them! (Summer 2024)
I am one of Julie’s great-great-great-granddaughters. I would not have been able to even start this book without the tireless work of women in the generations before me. One of Julie’s granddaughters, Lucy Morris Ellsworth Creevey, found more than 2,000 family letters in an old bureau in a cellar, many nearly destroyed by moisture and mildew. Some had been written on foolscap, some on wallpaper – anything that came to hand.
Lucy Creevey spent the 1950s deciphering handwriting, determining the chronological order (Julie only dated four of her letters) and typing them up.
In the 1970s, two of Lucy’s daughters picked up the transcribed letters, interspersed with comments in red ink from their mother, and continued the massive transcription project. One batch of more than 1,300 letters, totaling thousands of pages, was sent to the New York Historical Society where it remains for anyone to review and study.