Fanny Fern 
Ruth Hall 

Ruth Hall is an autobiographical novel by Fanny Fern, telling her life story overlaid with a façade of fiction. Ruth Hall is a fictionalized version of Fanny Fern and one of Ruth’s poignant characteristics, and one of the novel’s main themes, is her quest for love. The autobiographical novel can be divided into three phases: Ruth’s happy marriage, impoverished widowhood, and rise to fame and financial independence as a newspaper columnist.

About the author

Fanny Fern (1811-1872), was an American novelist, children’s writer, humorist, and newspaper columnist. Fern’s popularity has been attributed to her conversational style and sense of what mattered to her mostly middle-class female readers. Her best-known work, the fictional autobiography Ruth Hall, has become a popular subject among feminist literary scholars.