"A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnessary." -- Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Dorothy Canfield Fisher (February 17, 1879 — November 9, 1958) was an educational reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early decades of the twentieth century. She was named by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the ten most influential women in the United States. Dorothy Canfield brought the Montessori method of child-rearing to the United States, presided over the country's first adult education program, and shaped literary tastes by serving as a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee from 1925 to 1951.
Her best-known work today is probably Understood Betsy, a children's book about a little orphaned girl who is sent to live with her cousins in Vermont. Though the book can be read purely for pleasure, it also describes a schoolhouse which is run much in the style of the Montessori method, for which Canfield was one of the first and most vocal advocates. Dorothy Canfield wrote an adult novel, The Home-Maker (1924), which was reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999.
"Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.""If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.""One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.""She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carried the steak in yesterday. And yet if she had warned him once about that, she had a thousand times!""Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.""Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .""Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."
Dorothea Frances Canfield, as she was named at birth, was born in Lawrence, Kansas on February 17, 1879. Her father was James Hulme Canfield, a college professor at the University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska, and president of The Ohio State University; her mother, Flavia Camp, was an artist and writer. However, Canfield is most closely associated with Vermont, where she spent her adult life, and which served as the setting for many of her books.
In 1899 Dorothy Canfield received a B.A. from The Ohio State University. She was also a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. Canfield went on to study Romance languages at Columbia University, and in 1904 was one of the few women of her generation to receive a doctoral degree. She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Dartmouth College, and also received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Smith, Williams, Ohio State University, and the University of Vermont. She spoke five languages fluently, and in addition to writing novels, short stories, memoirs, and educational works, she also forayed into literary criticism and translation.In 1907 she married John Redwood Fisher, and together they had two children, a son and a daughter. Another concern of Dorothy Canfield was her war work. She went to France during World War I, and worked with blinded soldiers. She also established a convalescent home for refugee French children from the invaded areas. William Lyon Phelps comments, "All her novels are autobiographical, being written exclusively out of her own experience and observation."
Her son James became a surgeon and captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. He served with the Alamo Scouts for three months at the end of 1944, following which he was attached to a Ranger unit which carried out the raid to free POW imprisoned at Cabanatuan in the Philippines. The raid was a great success, with the Rangers suffering only two fatalities. Captain Fisher was one, mortally wounded by a mortar shell. As he lay dying the next day, his last words were "Did we get them all out?"
Fisher died at the age of 79, in Arlington, Vermont, in 1958.
The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award, named after her, is a unique award for new American children's books, as the winner is chosen by the vote of child readers.
A dormitory at Goddard College in Plainfield Vermont is named for Fisher.