Editor's Note

Nineteenth-century US literature without Fanny Fern makes no sense to me, and it is easy to forget that my generation was the first to read Ruth Hall alongside The Scarlet Letter and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Joyce W. Warren's 1985 profile of Fern, which appeared in Legacy's fourth issue, made possible this more comprehensive— and more complicated—understanding of literary history.

In this issue we are reprinting the Fern profile in memory of Joyce Warren, who died last December, and in honor of the role she played in reimagining American literature. Warren's essay began a conversation about Fern that continues, most recently with Kevin McMullen's "Turning Over Fresh Leaves: A Reconsideration of Fanny Fern's Periodical Writing," also in this issue. McMullen examines the material culture of Fern's weekly column in the New York Ledger: how her column as columns of text on a page reveals the vagaries of newspaper culture, the dynamics of influence and reputation in Fern's career, and the precarious conditions under which even wildly successful women writers continue to work. Our scholarship is grounded in its own critical context as much as the subject's historical context. Read together, Warren's and McMullen's essays reveal knowledge production as intergenerational collaboration.

Just before this issue went to press, we received news of Nina Baym's death. In our next issue we will celebrate Nina's life and work, but for now we mourn her loss and extend our deepest sympathy to her family and friends.