Lena Jane Fry Explained

Lena Jane Fry
Birth Name:	Selena Jane Hawke
Birth Date:	March 6, 1850
Birth Place:	Hawkesville, Ontario, Canada
Death Date:	October 26, 1938 (aged 88)
Death Place:	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation:	Writer
Children:	5, including Nena Blake

Lena Jane Hawke Fry (March 6, 1850^[1] – October 26, 1938) was a Canadian-born American writer. Her Other Worlds (1905) is considered an early utopian novel by a North American woman.^[2]

Biography

Selena Hawke was born in Hawkesville, Ontario, the daughter of Gabriel Hawke and Jane Machell Hawke. Both of her parents were born in the United States; her father was a lawyer and a local official in Waterloo County.^[3] She married Stephen Fry in 1870,^[4] and had five children (one son died in infancy). They divorced in 1894.^[5]

In 1907, Fry was drawn into a public controversy when her daughter, actress Nena Blake,^[6] refused to marry a suitor who spent extravagantly, either on building or destroying her stage career. Nena Blake achieved some Broadway success^[7] before she died in 1924.^[8] Fry died in 1938, at the age of 88, in Chicago.^[9]

Publications

Fry's utopian novel^{[10] [11]} Other Worlds (1905) is set in a communitarian colony^[12] on a planet named Herschel, after William Herschel.^[13] The book was dedicated to her three daughters.

• Other Worlds: A Story Concerning the Wealth Earned by American Citizens and Showing How It Can Be Secured to Them Instead of to the Trusts (1905)^[14]
• "What the Mother Says" (1907)^[15]

External links

• • Iva Balic, "Always painting the future: Utopian desire and the women's movement in selected works by United States female writers at the turn of the twentieth century" (PhD dissertation, University of North Texas 2009); includes discussion of Fry's Other Worlds.

Notes and References

1. Some sources give her birth year as 1849.
2. Book: Donawerth, Jane L. . Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference . Kolmerten . Carol A. . 1994-07-01 . Syracuse University Press . 978-0-8156-2620-6 . 113 . en.
3. News: Mills . Rych . 2017-07-15 . Seven meetings that decided Waterloo County . 2024-07-13 . Waterloo Region Record . 36 . Newspapers.com.
4. Web site: Selena J. "Lena" Hawke . 2024-07-13 . Waterloo Region Generations.
5. News: 1894-02-24 . Two Absolute Divorces . 2024-07-13 . The Buffalo Enquirer . 6.
6. News: 1913-08-06 . Proper Dressing As Essential as Acting . 2024-07-13 . The Winnipeg Tribune . 7 . Newspapers.com.
7. News: 1913-08-29 . Becomes Favorite Broadway Ingenue; Out of Music Comedy Into the Drama . 2024-07-13 . The San Francisco Examiner . 7 . Newspapers.com.
8. News: 1924-10-22 . Jewels of Actress Valued at $25,000 Given to Family . 2024-07-13 . The Brooklyn Daily Eagle . 24 . Newspapers.com.
9. News: 1938-10-27 . Lena J. Fry . 2024-07-13 . Chicago Tribune . Newspapers.com. 14.
10. Web site: Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by WomenAn Annotated Reading List of Online Editions of Speculative Fiction. . 2024-07-13 . Digital Library, University of Pennsylvania.
11. Book: Rooney, Charles J. . Dreams and visions : a study of American utopias, 1865-1917 . 1985 . Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press . Internet Archive . 978-0-313-23727-0 . 106.
12. Book: Seed, David . Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors . 1995-05-01 . Syracuse University Press . 978-0-8156-2640-4 . 199. en.
13. Web site: SFE: Fry, Lena Jane . 2024-07-13 . The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
14. Web site: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Other Worlds, by Lena Jane Fry . 1905 . 2024-07-13 . Project Gutenberg.
15. News: 1907-05-19 . What the Mother Says . 2024-07-13 . Newspapers.com . St. Louis Post-Dispatch . 59.