Josephine Spencer

Josephine Spencer (April 30, 1861 - October 28, 1928) was a writer and journalist from the United States. Her creative writing was inspired membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Josephine Spencer, circa 1897

Biography

Josephine Spencer was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861, the daughter of Daniel Spencer and Emily Shafter Thompson.[1] She published over 100 poems and over 75 short stories, primarily in regional and religious publications of Utah though also in national publications such as The Magazine of Poetry and Literary Review.

Beginning in the 1890s, "Spencer was hired as the Deseret News society and literary editor, a job she held for decades." [2] She was a founding member of the Utah Women's Press Club in late 1891.[3] In May 1893, she traveled on assignment to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition and reported through the Deseret News of Utah's representation at the exhibits.[4] "It is a great deal for Utah to be represented even in a small way at the Exposition, for no such opportunity has ever been or ever will be again offered for advertising the resources of our Territory and the talents and industry of her people", she wrote for the Juvenile Instructor that November.[5]

Spencer never married. She was active in civic organizations such as Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. She moved to California at the end of her life, probably working for the Pasadena Star.[6] The bulk of Spencer's work is typical of the Home Literature style of LDS literature, characterized by didacticism and stringent morality. At the end of her life, however, she published "Little Mother", a reworking of her 1910 story "To Keep" and "with one stunning rewrite, Spencer broke out of Home Literature's safety and wrestled with sensitive questions about mothering, family relationships, gender roles, and ultimately, faith in God."[7] She died five months after its publication.

The sole collection of her work, The Senator from Utah and Other Tales of the Wasatch, was published in 1895 in Salt Lake City by George Q. Cannon & Sons.[8] The tales in this collection, set in the Salt Lake Valley and the Oquirrh Mountains, promoted Mormon-style communal living in the wake of economic depression after the Panic of 1893.[9] She also wrote the dedicatory poem to Life Sketches of Orson Spencer and Others in the History of Primary Work by Aurelia Spencer Rogers in 1898.[10]

References
  1. Kylie Nielson Turley, "'Untrumpeted and Unseen': Josephine Spencer, Mormon 'Authoress'" Journal of Mormon History Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 127-164
  2. Author bio accompanying Spencer's short story "Little Mother" in Irreantum 9.2/10.1 (2007-2008)
  3. Baker, Sherry. "Utah Women's Press Club, 1891–1928" in Women's Press Organizations, 1881-1999, ed. Elizabeth V. Burt. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000: 215. ISBN 0-313-30661-3
  4. Reid L. Nielson. Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2011) p. 49
  5. Neilson, Reid. Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011: 49–50. ISBN 978-0-19-538403-1
  6. Author bio accompanying Spencer's short story "Little Mother" in Irreantum 9.2/10.1 (2007-2008)
  7. "Wrestling with LDS Motherhood: Evolving Feminism in Josephine Spencer's "To Keep" and "Little Mother" by Kylie Nielson Turley in Irreantum 9.2/10.1 (2007-2008)
  8. Mormon Literature Database
  9. Baym, Nina. Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011: 113–114. ISBN 978-0-252-03597-5
  10. Baym, Nina. Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011: 114. ISBN 978-0-252-03597-5
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