Lena Jane Fry

Lena Jane Fry
Lena Jane Fry, from a 1905 publication
Born	Selena Jane Hawke March 6, 1850 Hawkesville, Ontario, Canada
Died	October 26, 1938 (aged 88) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Writer
Children	5, including Nena Blake

Lena Jane Hawke Fry (March 6, 1850[1] – October 26, 1938) was a Canadian-born American writer. Her Other Worlds (1905) is considered an early utopian novel by a North American woman.[2][3][4]

Biography

Selena Hawke was born in Hawkesville, Ontario, the daughter of Gabriel Hawke and Jane Machell Hawke. Both of her parents were born in the United States;[5] her father was a lawyer and a local official in Waterloo County.[6] She married Stephen Fry in 1870,[5] and had five children (one son died in infancy). They divorced in 1894.[7]

In 1907, Fry was drawn into a public controversy when her daughter, actress Nena Blake,[8] refused to marry a suitor who spent extravagantly, either on building or destroying her stage career.[9] Nena Blake achieved some Broadway success[10] before she died in 1924.[11] Fry died in 1938, at the age of 88, in Chicago.[12]

Publications

Fry's utopian novel[13][3] Other Worlds (1905) is set in a communitarian colony[4] on a planet named Herschel, after William Herschel.[14] The book was dedicated to her three daughters.[15]

• Other Worlds: A Story Concerning the Wealth Earned by American Citizens and Showing How It Can Be Secured to Them Instead of to the Trusts (1905)[15]
• "What the Mother Says" (1907)[9]

References

1. Some sources give her birth year as 1849.
2. Donawerth, Jane L.; Kolmerten, Carol A. (1994-07-01). Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference. Syracuse University Press. p. 113. ISBN 978-0-8156-2620-6.
3. Rooney, Charles J. (1985). Dreams and visions : a study of American utopias, 1865-1917. Internet Archive. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-313-23727-0.
4. Seed, David (1995-05-01). Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors. Syracuse University Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-8156-2640-4.
5. "Selena J. "Lena" Hawke". Waterloo Region Generations. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
6. Mills, Rych (2017-07-15). "Seven meetings that decided Waterloo County". Waterloo Region Record. p. 36. Retrieved 2024-07-13 – via Newspapers.com.
7. "Two Absolute Divorces". The Buffalo Enquirer. 1894-02-24. p. 6. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
8. "Proper Dressing As Essential as Acting". The Winnipeg Tribune. 1913-08-06. p. 7. Retrieved 2024-07-13 – via Newspapers.com.
9. "What the Mother Says". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 1907-05-19. p. 59. Retrieved 2024-07-13 – via Newspapers.com.
10. "Becomes Favorite Broadway Ingenue; Out of Music Comedy Into the Drama". The San Francisco Examiner. 1913-08-29. p. 7. Retrieved 2024-07-13 – via Newspapers.com.
11. "Jewels of Actress Valued at $25,000 Given to Family". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1924-10-22. p. 24. Retrieved 2024-07-13 – via Newspapers.com.
12. "Lena J. Fry". Chicago Tribune. 1938-10-27. p. 14. Retrieved 2024-07-13 – via Newspapers.com.
13. "Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by WomenAn Annotated Reading List of Online Editions of Speculative Fiction". Digital Library, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
14. "SFE: Fry, Lena Jane". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
15. "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Other Worlds, by Lena Jane Fry". Project Gutenberg. 1905. Retrieved 2024-07-13.

External links

• Lena Jane Fry at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Iva Balic, "Always painting the future: Utopian desire and the women's movement in selected works by United States female writers at the turn of the twentieth century" (PhD dissertation, University of North Texas 2009); includes discussion of Fry's Other Worlds.