Born in Fredonia, New York, on July 24, 1876, Alice Jane Chandler Webster adopted the name Jean while attending the Lady Jane Grey School in Binghamton, New York. She graduated from Vassar College, where she was a classmate and close friend of Adelaide Crapsey, in 1901. Her interest in writing dated from an early age and doubtless profited from the fact that her father, Charles L. Webster, was Mark Twain╒s publisher and her maternal grandmother was his sister. She contributed a weekly column to the Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier while in college and at the same time started writing the stories that were collected in her first book, When Patty Went to College, 1903.
She soon followed with The Wheat Princess, 1905, and Jerry, Junior, 1907, both inspired by her extended visit to Italy, The Four Pools Mystery, published anonymously, 1908, Much Ado About Peter, 1909, Just Patty, more stories about the character perhaps modeled on Adelaide Crapsey, 1911, and Daddy-Long-Legs, 1912, her most popular work. Daddy-Long-Legs, first a serial in the Ladies╒ Home Journal, a best-seller in book form, a successful stage play in 1914 in Jean Webster╒s own adaptation, and in 1919 a popular Mary Pickford silent film, was not only a successful piece of fiction but also a stimulus to reform in the institutional treatment of orphans. In 1914 she published Dear Enemy, a sequel and also a best-seller. She died in New York City on June 11, 1916.
