Global InformationThe Fierce Dispute information
 1987 edition | |
| Author | Helen Hooven Santmyer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Gothic, psychological, family saga |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
Publication date | 1929 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 208 pp (1st edition, hardcover) |
The Fierce Dispute is a 1929 novel by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Her second novel, it is set around 1900 in an unnamed town in Ohio (later acknowledged by Santmyer to be Xenia[1]).
The novel tells of three generations of women, the wealthy, elderly Margaret Baird, her daughter Hilary, and Hilary's daughter Lucy Anne, aged 9, who live reclusively. Hilary had studied in Italy, supported by her financially successful elder brother Will. There she met and married Paolo, a gifted musician and composer, over her mother's objections. Paolo proved to be a philanderer, and Hilary eventually left him. Margaret has allowed Hilary and Lucy Anne to stay, provided that Lucy Anne be kept ignorant of her father and of music, and has even written her will to provide generous support conditional on continued music avoidance. But Lucy Anne has a natural talent, setting up the "fierce dispute" between mother and grandmother, which is only resolved by Paolo's ghost.
Santmyer acknowledged that the house itself, and its reclusive atmosphere, is based on the "Roberts Villa", in Xenia.[1] The actual occupants had been, when Santmyer was growing up, two elderly spinsters who never went out, and their nephew who sometimes went out the back way.[2]
Like Santmyer's first novel, Herbs and Apples, the novel received a minor reception at the time, but otherwise made no impact. It too was rediscovered when Santmyer became a literary sensation in 1984, and reissued in hardcover (St. Martin's Press, 1987) and paperback (St. Martin's Press, 1988) with an introduction by Weldon Kefauver (Santmyer's editor at Ohio State University Press), three poems by Santmyer, and a biographical postscript.
A 1999 paperback re-issue (OSU Press) had a foreword by Cecilia Tichi (of Vanderbilt University) and the three poems by Santmyer.
- ^ a b Santmyer, Helen Hooven (1985). "Introduction to the 1985 Edition". Herbs and Apples (2nd ed.). ISBN 9780060154868.
- ^ Santmyer, Helen Hooven (1962). Ohio Town. OSU Press. p. 77.