Helen Hooven Santmyer (1895–1986)

Helen Hooven Santmyer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a small child, she moved with her family to Xenia for her father's business. She began to write as a child, keeping a diary from age 10, and her ambition was to become a professional writer.
She entered Wellesley College in 1914 and graduated four years later with a B.A. in English literature and composition, publishing several poems as an undergraduate. During this time, she was active in the struggle for women's rights. In 1919, she moved to New York City and worked for Charles Scribner’s Sons as an editorial secretary at Scribner’s Magazine. She returned to Xenia in 1921 to care for her ailing mother, and worked as an assistant professor in the English Department at Wellesley. Three years later, she went on to graduate studies at Oxford University, and published her first novel, Herbs and Apples, in 1925. Helen was awarded a B.Litt degree with a thesis on the 18th century British writer Clara Reeve, and returned to Ohio. In 1928, she joined the Xenia Woman's Club. She published her second novel, The Fierce Dispute, in 1929. In 1936, she took the position of Dean of Women at Cedarville College and during her 17 years there, also became head of the English Department. She resigned in 1953 and went to work as a reference librarian for the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library. In 1960, she retired in order to devote herself full-time to writing. Ohio Town, her 1962 history and memoir of Xenia, won the Florence Roberts Head Award for excellence in Literature. At age 69, she began writing the 1,300 page novel ...And the Ladies of the Club, which was eventually published by Ohio State University Press in 1982. At first, only a few hundred copies of the book were sold, mostly to Ohio libraries. It was by chance that the novel was read by some people in the literary world who saw its potential for a larger audience. This led to the book being republished by G.P. Putnam's Sons and becoming a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. It also became a New York Times bestseller, and led the list for 37 consecutive weeks. The book sold more than 162,000 hardcover copies and an additional million copies in paperback, and made Helen a national celebrity. Her final novel, Farewell Summer, was published posthumously in 1988.