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.

Surprisingly, the evidence about Fanny Seward's book life in midcentury is remarkably complete. (3) Surviving today at Seward House in Auburn, New York, are Fanny's book collection of 348 volumes and at the University of Rochester her conscientiously maintained journal, with many descriptions of what and how she read. (4) In addition, several examples of Fanny's prose and poetry survive, largely at the University of Rochester.

Fanny was named after her mother, born Frances Adeline Miller, a free-thinking woman of Quaker background and high principles who has been credited with influencing her husband toward support of abolition. (5) Fanny's maternal grandfather, a successful lawyer and businessman who dealt largely in real estate speculation in Auburn, New York, served as circuit judge in his later years. Judge Elijah Miller (1782-1861) hired Seward as his junior partner in 1823, shortly after Seward's graduation from Union College, and Seward's marriage to Judge Miller's daughter Frances occurred the following year. The couple moved into the Miller family home upon their marriage, joining Judge Miller's mother and his sister in the imposing residence in the thriving city of Auburn, which then rivaled nearby Syracuse in importance. The Sewards lived in the Miller family home throughout their lives, with Frances spending most of her time there and Seward traveling frequently to Albany in the early years and to Washington, D.C., after 1850 when serving as senator from New York. It was Judge Miller's assets that provided financial security to William Henry Seward and enabled him to pursue a career in politics. (6)

Though described by her father as "retiring," Fanny, as a teenager in Washington, D.C., met many dignitaries of the day from the worlds of politics, the military, the arts, and letters. (7) During her father's campaign for the presidency as Lincoln's rival in 1860 Fanny even traveled with her father throughout the country. Fanny traveled regularly between Auburn and Washington, D.C., making her debut in the capital in 1863 and participating, if largely as observer, in the busy social life of Washington from 1860 to 1866, during and just after the Civil War.

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In her journal Fanny mentions many family visitors and acquaintances, including nursing pioneer Dorothea Dix, painter Emanuel Leutze, artist Henry Inman, actor Edwin Booth, writer Anthony Trollope, and a virtual parade of military leaders, statesmen (including cabinet members), and members of the diplomatic corps, both American and European, who made their way to the Washington, D.C. home of the secretary of state. Fanny saw Abraham Lincoln often in her family parlor and at the White House and refers to him with warmth and admiration. In her journal (September 1, 1861) Fanny, who felt a particular tenderness for animals, describes with delight the scene of the president in his library and office playing with two kittens that her father had given to Lincoln. Fanny saw relatively little of Mary Todd Lincoln, however, and generally considered her "very odd" (January 9, 1863, journal). Mrs. Lincoln seems not to have liked Fanny's parents. (8) Indeed, she was reported by Fanny (September 9, 1861) as having snubbed Frances on one occasion when she and Fanny called at the White House.

Despite her elevated social connections, Fanny lived quietly and in relative obscurity, preferring, as did her mother, the family hearth to formal society in either Auburn or Washington, D.C. (figure 2). Particularly in Auburn, where the weather, other than in summer, is often bitterly cold and wet, Fanny spent much time indoors near the family fireplaces and heaters in communal areas. Her immediate circle consisted of her beloved parents; her three brothers; sisters-in-law Anna and Jenny (Janet); "Aunty Worden" (Frances's sister Lazette, who lived with the family for long stretches); household servants, including her mother's companion, Kate; Fanny's governess, Sarah Dare Hance; some young women from Auburn, including Mary Titus and her closest friend, Ellen Perry; a few outsiders, including her doctors; "Miss Parker" from Auburn; and the cosmopolitan actress and family friend, Charlotte Cushman, with whom Fanny was infatuated during her late adolescence. (9)

Fanny's one brush with fame came from an incident that caused her much distress. She was with her father on April 14, 1865, the night of Lincoln's assassination, when a confederate of John Wilkes Booth broke into her father's bedroom, wielding a knife and gun, and attempted to murder Seward. Fanny's presence was mentioned in the many accounts of this bloody ordeal.

Fanny's education took place largely at home under the direction of her mother, a normal arrangement for a girl of her time and situation, reflecting a contemporary view of mothers as wise guides and protectors of their daughters' minds and morals. (10) When very young, she and her brother Will were taught in structured sessions from 9:00 A.M. to noon, with their mother as tutor. Fanny later attended the Auburn Young Ladies' Institute, but her attendance was spotty due to her many trips to Washington (where her father was secretary of state) and to frequent bouts of illness. (11) She was privately tutored by experts in riding, painting, French conversation, piano, and voice but showed neither aptitude nor enthusiasm for these skills. Fanny briefly attended Mapes's boarding school in Philadelphia at age eighteen but withdrew almost immediately for reasons of ill health. (12)

Fanny's literary remains tell us, at the most basic level, about Fanny as an individual, given to "fits of blues," sensitive and shy, "unaffected," according to her father, "bashful," according to Fanny herself, yet nonetheless impassioned about literature. (13) Her reading, in fact, relieved her anxious feelings. About surviving her "melancholy fits," she wrote in her journal (May 11, 1862, at age seventeen), "I find reading a great help in distracting attention and changing the mind's current."

So enamored of her books was Fanny that she was intent upon writing as a life's activity, "the work I cannot choose but take." Her plan to remain unmarried had the full support of her father, who had taken out insurance to provide for her. (14) "He did not want me to marry some scamp and be ill-treated," she wrote on January 22, 1863, at the age of eighteen. Fanny hoped to support herself, at least in part, as a writer but had "a horror of appearing to…