fPARA ^PAR@ ` 6TEXT ` (Porter, Eleanor Hodgman1868╨1920novelistBorn in Littleton, New Hampshire, on December 19, 1868, Eleanor Emily Hodgman attended public schools until ill health forced her to leave high school; she then studied with tutors. She later studied singing at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She gained local reputation as a singer in concerts and church choirs and continued her career after her marriage in May 1892 to John L. Porter, a businessman with whom she lived during the next decade in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in New York City, and in Springfield, Vermont. By the time they settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about 1901, however, she had abandoned music in favor of writing. Her stories began appearing in numerous popular magazines and newspapers, and in 1907 she published her first novel, Cross Currents. There followed The Turn of the Tide, 1908, The Story of Marco, 1911, Miss Billy, her first really successful book, 1911, and Miss Billy╒s Decision, 1912. In 1913 Porter published Pollyanna, a sentimental tale of a most improbable heroine, a young girl whose ╥glad game╙ of always looking for and finding the bright side of things somehow reforms her antagonists, restores hope to the hopeless, and generally rights the world. The book╒s immediate and enormous popularity╤in countless reprinted editions it eventually sold over a million copies╤must be attributed to the American reading public╒s eagerness for reassurance that rural virtues and cheerful optimism still existed, as well as to Porter╒s skill in blending dashes of social conscience and ironic distance into the sentimentalism of her message. Pollyanna, second on the fiction best-seller list for 1914, was followed by Pollyanna Grows Up, 1915. Pollyanna was made into a Broadway play starring Helen Hayes in 1916 and then into a motion picture starring Mary Pickford in 1920, and it inspired a veritable industry for related books and products. ╥Glad╙ clubs sprang up around the country and then abroad as Pollyanna was translated into several foreign languages. The name itself soon entered the American lexicon, albeit in a largely pejorative sense. Porter╒s other books included Miss Billy Married, 1914, Just David, best-seller in 1916, Six Star Ranch, 1916, The Road to Understanding, a best-seller in 1917, Oh, Money! Money!, a best-seller in 1918, Dawn, a best seller in 1919, Mary-Marie, a best seller in 1920, Sister Sue, 1921, and Hustler Joe, 1924. Many of her more than 200 stories were collected in Across the Years, 1919, Tangled Threads, 1919, The Tie that Binds, 1919, and, posthumously, Money, Love and Kate, 1925, Little Pardner, 1926, and Just Mother, 1927. Porter died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1920. A series of juvenile Pollyanna books was subsequently written by Harriet L. Smith and Elizabeth Borton. µstyl ` > ! ¬ 5¬ " 5¬ , !I 5 !I C !I U !I i !I q !I â !I ï !I ò !I ├ !I ╪ !I Γ 5¬ π !I ⁿ !I !I r !I { !I ╛ !I ╨ !I ┘ !I Γ !I
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