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Canadian-American writer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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][3][4]
Lena Jane Fry | |
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![]() Lena Jane Fry, from a 1905 publication | |
Born | Selena Jane Hawke March 6, 1850 Hawkesville, Ontario, Canada |
Died | October 26, 1938 (aged 88) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
Occupation | Writer |
Children | 5, including Nena Blake |
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;[5] her father was a lawyer and a local official in Waterloo County.[6] She married Stephen Fry in 1870,[5] and had five children (one son died in infancy). They divorced in 1894.[7]
In 1907, Fry was drawn into a public controversy when her daughter, actress Nena Blake,[8] refused to marry a suitor who spent extravagantly, either on building or destroying her stage career.[9] Nena Blake achieved some Broadway success[10] before she died in 1924.[11] Fry died in 1938, at the age of 88, in Chicago.[12]
Fry's utopian novel[13][3] Other Worlds (1905) is set in a communitarian colony[4] on a planet named Herschel, after William Herschel.[14] The book was dedicated to her three daughters.[15]