Blanche Willis Howard


Blanche Willis Howard was a best-selling American novelist who lived most of her productive years in southern Germany.

Early years

She was born and raised in Bangor, Maine and, after graduating from Bangor High School, spent a further year of schooling in New York City. She then lived for a year in Chicago with her sister Marion Howard Smith, who was married to Benjamin Fuller Smith, a son of former Maine Governor Samuel E. Smith.

Career

Howard gained success with her first novel, One Summer, set in the coastal town of Wiscasset, Maine. An 1877 edition of One Summer was illustrated by Augustus Hoppin. The publisher of One Summer was James R. Osgood, who began his career with Ticknor and Fields and later was in partnership with Henry Houghton.
Following publication of One Summer, Howard went to Europe, having received an assignment from the Boston Evening Transcript for a series of articles. Her articles were subsequently published as the travel book One Year Abroad. Howard settled in Stuttgart, Germany and continued to write, producing novels, short fiction, poems, and essays. For two years, she was editor of Hallberger's Illustrated Magazine, an English-language magazine first edited by the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath.
To supplement her income, Howard supervised the education of American girls in Stuttgart. Among her students were the three daughters of the actor Lawrence Barrett and the two daughters of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, founder of the cosmetics and patent medicine company Recamier Manufacturing. In 1890, Howard married Baron Julius von Teuffel, a court physician to King Charles I of Württemberg, thereby becoming the Baroness von Teuffel. She died in Munich in 1898.
Some of Howard's publications were translated into several European languages, including French, German, and Italian. Howard was one of only a handful of American novelists of this era to write from abroad, the iconic example being Henry James. Howard was an accomplished pianist and Franz Liszt is said to have complimented her playing following a performance.

Works