Anna de Koven

Who was Anna de Koven?

Anna Farwell de Koven was an American novelist, historian and socialite. The wife of famed composer Reginald de Koven and the daughter of senator Charles B. Farwell, she published her works as Mrs. Reginald de Koven. A well-known society hostess, she and her husband gave many musical receptions while living in their home in Irving Place in New York. An amateur athlete, she wrote in Good Housekeeping that "no sport is too reckless, too daring, or too strenuous for the more experienced among athletic American women." Her novels included 1895's a Sawdust Doll, published by Stone and Kimball as part of "the Peacock Library." Her non-fictional works included a two-volume biography of John Paul Jones, published in 1913, and a study of spiritualism entitled a Cloud of Witnesses published in 1920.