Connection To Noted 1800's Author

Helen Maria Fiske b. 1830 in Massachusetts. Helen Hunt Jackson was born Helen Maria Fiske during the first term of President Andrew Jackson, a former Indian fighter and advocate of removing Indians living in the eastern United States to the West.

She was a prolific writer, her initial literary efforts were devoted to children's stories, travel sketches, poems, novels, and essays under the pseudonyms "H.H." and "Saxe Holm." Her anonymous work included Verses (1870) and a novel Mercy Philbrick's Choice (1876), in which Emily Dickinson was part-model for the heroine. In time, Jackson would produce over 30 books and hundreds of articles. She most likely would have become better known without the pseudonyms, but popular convention of the time dictated that female writers conceal their true identity. However, once she began to author books about Native Americans or Indians (as they were generally known), she proudly used her full name.

Jackson became perhaps the most prolific woman writer of her era in the country. In 1874, the noted Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist, orator, and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, regarded her as "the greatest woman poet" and rated her poetry as superior to the work of almost all her American male contemporaries. This was, indeed, high praise from a very respected source and reflected her position as a national cultural leader. Jackson continued her struggle to redress Indian grievances and also returned to her earlier career as a writer of poetry, essays, and novels.


In 1884, based upon her earlier experience with the California Indians, she hurriedly wrote the popular, commercially successful novel, Ramona. The work, which has been reprinted frequently and adapted to screen and stage, was the highlight of her literary career. In 1886, the North American Review called the book "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman," ranking it with Uncle Tom's Cabin by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe as one of the two foremost ethical novels of the century.

Notwithstanding such positive reaction, Jackson was disappointed by the public's failure to appreciate the work for its attempt to do for the Indians what Stowe had achieved for the slaves. According to the late California historian Walton Bean: This novel was often called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of California, but its most enduring effect was to create a collection of regional myths that stimulated the tourist trade. These legends became so ingrained in the culture of Southern California that they were often mistaken for realities. In later years many who visited "Ramona's birthplace" in San Diego or the annual "Ramona Pageant" at Hemet (eighty miles north of San Diego) were surprised and disappointed if they chanced to learn that Ramona was a (fictional) novel rather than a biography.

She is a member of one of my direct lines so I have not listed her lineage. To see her lineage please reference my rootsweb site.