Novelist Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd: Iowa Time Machine January 31, 1868

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On January 31, 1868, Iowa novelist Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd was born at Plum Grove in Iowa City. At a time when female authors often hid behind male pseudonyms or wrote only for domestic audiences, Brainerd's novels celebrated adventurous, independent heroines.

Brainerd's parents, Walter Hoyt and Louisa Smith, were prominent abolitionists, and their daughter inherited their reformist spirit. She left Iowa for education in the East and began her career as a fashion journalist for the New York Sun before expanding into fiction. She also contributed to major publications, including Ladies' Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's, establishing herself in the competitive world of New York journalism.

Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd published at least ten novels between 1902 and the 1920s. Though she wrote most of her fiction at her Connecticut farm retreat, "Faraway Farm," her stories frequently featured Midwestern girls experiencing metropolitan adventures. Her most celebrated novel, "How Could You, Jean?," was adapted into a silent film starring Mary Pickford, one of early Hollywood's biggest stars. Modern scholarship recognizes her work as proto-feminist literature that gave voice to women's aspirations for independence and self-determination.

Plum Grove Historic House, where Brainerd was born, served as the home of Robert Lucas, making her birthplace a site of genuine historical significance. Today, Brainerd rests in Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, her grave positioned in the family plot alongside her parents and her husband, Charles. Plum Grove, a National Historic Site operated by the State Historical Society of Iowa, welcomes visitors who can walk throughthe same rooms where the novelist spent her earliest years. #Iowa #OTD #History #Literature #Empowerment