Harriet Vaughan Cheney

Who was Harriet Vaughan Cheney?

Harriet Vaughan Cheney was an American-Canadian novelist. The daughter of Hannah Webster Foster and sister of Eliza Lanesford Cushing, also both writers, she wrote a number of historical romances, among them A Peep at the Pilgrims in Sixteen Thirty-Six and The Rivals of Acadia, as well as religious works for children.

Cheney was born in Brighton, Massachusetts and published her first works in Boston. In 1830, she married Canadian merchant Edward Cheney, with whom she would have four children, and moved to Montreal, where she would spend the rest of her life. Her sister Eliza had also married a Canadian and moved to Montreal, and the two regularly contributed stories and poems to the Literary Garland, Canada's main literary periodical. Cheney continued to publish her longer works in Boston. After the deaths of their husbands in 1845 and 1846, the two sisters founded the Snow-Drop, a monthly girls' magazine "primarily concerned with social roles and domestic responsibilities appropriate for young women." Cheney died in 1889.