Growing up with books: Fanny Seward's book collecting, reading, and writing in mid-nineteenth-century New York State.

During her short life (1844-66) Fanny Seward, daughter of Lincoln's secretary of state, William Henry Seward, spent considerable time and energy on her personal library, her diaries, and her creative writing. Fanny Seward's reading was, she suggests in her writing, her dearest pleasure. In her diaries she included lists of books acquired and read, critical remarks on them, and fragments of prose and poetry reflecting her deepening knowledge of literature. This case study of a privileged girl in New York State during the American Civil War years explores interconnections among the many bookish strands in her life and social circle.

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Adolescent girls of earlier times have trod lightly across the book history landscape, leaving us only scattered evidence of their book-collecting activity, reading, and literary output. (1) Fanny Seward was an exception. This privileged young woman created a literary heritage of considerable size, consisting of a personal book collection of over three hundred titles, extensive journals replete with accounts of reading, and a modest output of her own literary efforts. These records have been carefully preserved over time, with the books remaining today in the handsome house in Auburn, New York, that Fanny knew throughout her brief life. As an account of the daughter of William Henry Seward, prominent in both state and national politics in the Civil War period, Fanny's story has significance beyond the confines of her childhood home and family. But it is Fanny's own story, and not that of her historically significant family members, that sheds light on the collecting, reading, and writing practices of her day.

The examination of Fanny Seward's complex and intertwined "book life" constitutes a case study of the interrelated collecting, reading, and writing practices of one girl, from childhood through adolescence, in a stable, prosperous household in the northern part of the United States during the years prior to and of the Civil War. A close look at the evidence reveals a number of themes that may be suggestive in understanding other cases in other places. The most obvious themes in this review of evidence about Fanny are suggested by the structure of this treatment: what Fanny collected, what categories of books sat on the shelves of her personal library, what she read at which ages, how she used her books, how reading functioned as a social activity, how her literary criticism and writing matured over time, and what happened to the evidence she generated. Other themes of ancillary interest crop up in the details: the private education of a privileged girl, reading for self-definition, and the role of reading as therapy for anxiety and grief.

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On one level, Fanny's personal library and her writings tell us about her everyday life. On another, this interrelated evidence reveals to us that Fanny's book culture, to a very large extent, was her life. Of course, Fanny spent her time socializing and practicing domestic arts, as did other privileged girls of her time, but she also devoted an enormous amount of time to reading, writing about her reading, consciously crafting reports of daily household activity, tending her personal book collection, and experimenting with literary forms. The record of Fanny's "book life" begins when she is four years of age, in 1849, and ends with her death at the age of twenty-one in 1866.

Frances Adeline Seward (1844-66), known as "Fanny," was the much-loved and only surviving daughter of William Henry Seward (1801-1872), who served two terms as governor of the state of New York (1838-42), U.S. senator (elected in 1849), and Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state (appointed in 1861). Fanny and her father were always close and affectionate companions (figure 1). When Fanny was four years old her mother wrote, "Fanny is her father's shadow-she cannot bear to have him leave the house." (2) Fanny was devoted to her father throughout her life and often felt torn between her desire to be with him in Washington, D.C., and to remain with her beloved mother in Auburn, New York.