Victor, Metta Victoria Fuller

Victor, Metta Victoria Fuller

▪ American author
née  Metta Victoria Fuller 
born March 2, 1831, Erie, Pa., U.S.
died June 26, 1885, Hohokus, N.J.

      American writer of popular fiction who is remembered as the author of many impassioned works on social ills and of a number of "dime novels (dime novel)," including one of the country's first detective novels.

      Metta Fuller grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and from 1839 in Wooster, Ohio. She and her elder sister Frances (Victor, Frances Auretta Fuller) attended a Wooster female seminary and began contributing stories to local newspapers and then to the Home Journal of New York. In 1848 she and Frances moved to New York City, where they entered into literary society. In 1851 they published Poems of Sentiment and Imagination, with Dramatic and Descriptive Pieces. Metta also published a temperance novel, The Senator's Son; or, The Maine Law: A Last Refuge (1851), which enjoyed some success in American and English editions, as well as Fashionable Dissipations (1854) and Mormon Wives (1856; also known as Lives of the Female Mormons).

      Fuller married Orville J. Victor, an editor, in 1856. For four years she assisted her husband in editing the Cosmopolitan Art Journal. She was editor of Home, a monthly magazine published by the firm of Beadle & Company, in 1859–60, but in 1860 she took over the editorship of the Cosmopolitan Art Journal when her husband turned his attention to developing a new series of cheap sensational books—the dime novels (dime novel)—for Beadle & Company. To the series and its successors, Metta Victor contributed Alice Wilde, the Raftsman's Daughter (1860), The Backwoods Bride (1860), and nearly a hundred more titles, all published anonymously. As “Seeley Regester” she published The Dead Letter (1866), often considered one of the first American detective novels (detective story). The most successful of her dime novels was Maum Guinea, and Her Plantation “Children” (1862), which enjoyed a large sale and was praised by antislavery activists and President Abraham Lincoln. She wrote numerous other books, issued anonymously or under various pseudonyms, and commanded high prices for the many stories and serials she contributed to various periodicals.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor — (nom de plume Seeley Regester) (March 2, 1831–June 26, 1885) is credited with authoring of one of the first detective novels in the United States. She wrote over 100 dime novels, pioneering the field.[1] Her husband was publishing pioneer …   Wikipedia

  • Victor, Frances Auretta Fuller — ▪ American author and historian née  Frances Auretta Fuller  born May 23, 1826, Rome, N.Y., U.S. died Nov. 14, 1902, Portland, Ore.       American writer and historian who wrote prolifically, and sometimes without acknowledgement, on the history… …   Universalium

  • Orville James Victor — (October 23, 1827 in Sandusky, Ohio – March 14, 1910 in Ho Ho Kus, New Jersey) was a U.S. theologian, journalist, editor and Abolitionist.[1] He is cited as the originator of the dime novel.[citation needed] During the American Civil War he wrote …   Wikipedia

  • Green, Anna Katharine — ▪ American author married name  Anna Green Rohlfs  born Nov. 11, 1846, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. died April 11, 1935, Buffalo, N.Y.  American writer of detective fiction (detective story) who helped to make the genre popular in America by creating… …   Universalium

  • Seeley Regester — Metta Victoria Fuller Victor …   Eponyms, nicknames, and geographical games

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