Draft:Harriette Fanning Read

Harriette Fanning Read
Harriett Fanning Read was an American Renaissance poet, author, and actress who has contributed several notable literary works to the time period. Her gothic and romantic themes reflect the writing of the era.

Family and Early Life
Harriette Fanning Read was born in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, which is close to Boston, in the 1820’s to an Irish-descended family. Her maternal family was deeply entrenched in the loyalist side of the Revolutionary War. Her father was a bookseller and publisher, which may explain why Miss Read received great support from her parents to pursue the arts.When her father, a “man of much intelligence and refined taste”, died early in her life, she and her mother moved in with her uncle, Colonel Fanning, who was an officer in the army. They moved from city to city, following the military assignments of her uncle. Read and her mother wanted a more permanent home, settling down in Washington DC, until Colonel Fanning died, then moved permanently to New York City.

Education
No records indicate if Read was formally educated or went to college, however her parents did urge her to be well-educated. Read showed a preference for Shakespearean poetry very early in her life. Harriette Fanning Read would go on to model her poetry after Shakespeare’s style throughout her career.

Careers
Harriette Fanning Read started her career as an author and moved into acting shortly after publishing her major work Dramatic Poems. Read produced and published novels, short stories, plays, and occasional features in the newspaper.

Notable Works
She had seven distinct works, newspaper features, plays, and a few short stories. Miss Read published a volume of Dramatic Poems;Medea, Ermini, and The New World, which was a collection of plays, also her acting debut. Medea was described as “the least typical and most interesting” of Read’s works, due to her writing style, but it was also considered as her greatest piece of work. Medea emphasized themes of “blind passionate love and defiant individual freedom.” Erminia was also about the tragedy of “love and intrigue”. The New World was a bit darker and included suicide. The Haunted Student was described as romantic and gothic, with corrupt characters. This novel included an array of themes, including knights, priests, dungeons, and torture chambers. The novel had an elaborate and complex plot, ultimately described as a romantic novel. Read was only twenty years old when she wrote these three dramas and living in New York City. In addition, Read released a novel titled, The Haunted Student: A Romance of the Fourteenth Century.

Literary Themes and Styles
Characterized by an interest in dramatic themes and interpersonal conflict, Read’s literary style reflected the ills and triumphs assumed inherent to the human condition, with many of her plays and short stories centering around the themes of romance, freedom, and questions of morality. Despite this, her works have a general tendency to avoid didactic lessons, presenting dramatic and melancholic scenes without moral imperative— similar to Edgar Allen Poe, who would have been her contemporary at the time of her writing.

The breadth of her work may be classified mainly within the ‘Gothic,’ ‘Romantic’ and, with focus on her plays, ‘Historical’ genres, similar to Shakespeare’s tradition of historical dramatizations. Though not receiving an immense amount of success in mainstream literary circles, Read’s contributions to the American Renaissance literary canon stands up among the work of her more lauded contemporaries.