Josephine Spencer
Josephine Spencer | |
|---|---|
 Josephine Spencer, 1897 | |
| Born | April 30, 1861 |
| Died | October 28, 1928 (aged 67) |
| Occupation | Writer, Journalist |
| Years active | 1887-1928 |
| Notable work | The Senator from Utah |
Josephine Spencer (April 30, 1861 - October 28, 1928) was an American writer, journalist, and political activist from Utah. She was an important figure in the Mormon Home Literature movement of the late 19th century who published more than a hundred poems fifty short stories, and five serialized novels in both regional and national publications. Latter-day Saint literary critic Michael Austin has called her "the most significant figure in Mormon letters that most people have never heard of."[1]
Biography
Josephine Spencer was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861. Her father, Daniel Spencer, was the mayor of Nauvoo before the Mormon Exodus. In Utah, he was a member of the Utah Territorial Legislature and the President of the Salt Lake City Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[2] Daniel died when Josephine was eight years old, and she was raised primarily by her mother, Emily Shafter Thompson.
Beginning in the 1890s, "Spencer was hired as the Deseret News society and literary editor, a job she held for decades."[3] She was a founding member of the Utah Women's Press Club in late 1891.[4] In May 1893, she traveled on assignment to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition and reported through the Deseret News of Utah's representation at the exhibits.[5] "It is a great deal for Utah to be represented even in a small way at the Exposition, for no such opportunity has ever been or ever will be again offered for advertising the resources of our Territory and the talents and industry of her people", she wrote for the Juvenile Instructor that November.[6]
Spencer never married. She was active in civic organizations such as Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. She moved to California at the end of her life, probably working for the Pasadena Star.[7] The bulk of Spencer's work is typical of the Home Literature style of LDS literature, characterized by didacticism and stringent morality. At the end of her life, however, she published "Little Mother", a reworking of her 1910 story "To Keep" and "with one stunning rewrite, Spencer broke out of Home Literature's safety and wrestled with sensitive questions about mothering, family relationships, gender roles, and ultimately, faith in God."[8] She died five months after its publication.
The first collection of her work, The Senator from Utah and Other Tales of the Wasatch, was published in 1895 in Salt Lake City by George Q. Cannon & Sons.[9] The tales in this collection, set in the Salt Lake Valley and the Oquirrh Mountains, promoted Mormon-style communal living in the wake of economic depression after the Panic of 1893.[10] She also wrote the dedicatory poem to Life Sketches of Orson Spencer and Others in the History of Primary Work by Aurelia Spencer Rogers in 1898.[11]
The second collection of her work, Josephine Spencer: Her Collected Works, Volume 1, 1887–1899, was published in 2020 by BCC Press.
References
- ^ Austin & Parshall 2022, p. 2.
- ^ Austin & Parshall 2022, p. 4.
- ^ Author bio accompanying Spencer's short story "Little Mother" in Irreantum 9.2/10.1 (2007-2008)
- ^ Baker, Sherry. "Utah Women's Press Club, 1891–1928" in Women's Press Organizations, 1881-1999, ed. Elizabeth V. Burt. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000: 215. ISBN 0-313-30661-3
- ^ Reid L. Nielson. Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2011) p. 49
- ^ Neilson, Reid. Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011: 49–50. ISBN 978-0-19-538403-1
- ^ Author bio accompanying Spencer's short story "Little Mother" in Irreantum 9.2/10.1 (2007-2008)
- ^ "Wrestling with LDS Motherhood: Evolving Feminism in Josephine Spencer's "To Keep" and "Little Mother" by Kylie Nielson Turley in Irreantum 9.2/10.1 (2007-2008)
- ^ Mormon Literature Database
- ^ Baym, Nina. Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011: 113–114. ISBN 978-0-252-03597-5
- ^ Baym, Nina. Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011: 114. ISBN 978-0-252-03597-5
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