Helen Hooven Santmyer

Helen Hooven Santmyer
1984 publicity photograph
Born	(1895-11-25)November 25, 1895 Cincinnati, Ohio
Died	21 February 1986(1986-02-21) (aged 90) Xenia, Ohio
Occupation	Novelist, Educator, Librarian
Nationality	American
Notable works	“... And Ladies of the Club”

Helen Hooven Santmyer (November 25, 1895 – February 21, 1986) was an American writer, educator, and librarian. She is known for her best-selling epic “... And Ladies of the Club”, published when she was in her 80s.

Life and career

Santmyer was born on November 25, 1895 in Cincinnati, Ohio, relocating with her family in Xenia, Ohio when she was five years old. She attended Wellesley College in 1918 and was active in the struggle for women's rights. Santmeyer took a job as an editorial secretary with Scribner's for two years, returned to Xenia, and taught locally and at Wellesley College before attending Oxford University in England for three years. Following her time in England, she wrote four novels and saw two of them published: Herbs and Apples, The Fierce Dispute. Santmyer also wrote poetry; one sonnet, "The Prairie Town", appeared in The Bookman Anthology of Verse in 1922.

She returned to Xenia in 1935 after accepting positions as Dean of Women and English department head at Cedarville College. Originally chartered as a Reformed Presbyterian college, Santmeyer resigned from the faculty when the school was purchased by the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Following her resignation, she took a position as a research librarian. Upon retirement in 1959, Santmeyer returned to full-time writing, publishing Ohio Town, a book containing reminiscences of Xenia, in 1963.

Her novel “... And Ladies of the Club” was published obscurely by Ohio State University Press in 1982. She permanently moved into a nursing home in 1983, nearly blind and weak from emphysema. By chance, the novel found its way to Hollywood people who saw great potential, leading to its republication in 1984, its being the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and a round of media frenzy. The novel became a monumental best-seller in 1984. She died in 1986.

Bibliography

• Herbs and Apples (1925)
• The Fierce Dispute (1929)
• Ohio Town (1963)
• “... And Ladies of the Club” (1982)
• Farewell, Summer (1988)
• The Hall with Eight Doors (unpublished)

Awards and achievements

• 1964 Florence Roberts Head Award, for Ohio Town
• 1983 Ohioana Book Award in the category of fiction, for “... And Ladies of the Club”
• 1984: 37 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, seven weeks at number-one (Ladies)
• 1984, inducted into Ohio Women's Hall of Fame
• 1984, Honorary Degree, Wright State University
• 1985, Ohio Governor's Award

Legacy

• The Helen Hooven Santmyer Prize, awarded annually since 1991 in the amount of $2500, was established by the Ohio State University Press for the "best book-length manuscript on the contributions of women, their lives and experiences, and their role in society."
• The Helen Hooven Santmyer Award for Excellence is a college scholarship.