Metta Victor
{{short description|American novelist}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Metta Victor
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| image = Metta Victoria Fuller Victor portrait from American Women.png
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| pseudonym = Seeley Regester
| birth_name = Metta Victoria Fuller
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1831|3|2}}
| birth_place = Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1885|6|26|1831|3|2}}
| death_place = Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey, U.S.
| resting_place = Ridgewood's Valleau Cemetery
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| nationality = American
| genre = Fiction
| movement = "Dime novels"
| spouse = Orville James Victor
}}
Metta Victor ({{nee}} Metta Victoria Fuller; March 2, 1831 – June 26, 1885), who used the pen name Seeley Regester among others, was an American novelist, credited with authoring one of the first detective novels in the United States. She wrote more than 100 dime novels, pioneering the field.{{cite web|first=Miranda|last=Orso|year=2002|title=Victor, Metta Victoria Fuller|url=http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Victor__Metta_Fuller.html|accessdate=2013-11-04|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130515194856/http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Victor__Metta_Fuller.html|archivedate=2013-05-15}}
Life
She was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, the third of five children of Adonijah Fuller and Lucy (Williams) Fuller.{{cite web|url=http://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/victor_meta.html |title=from Beadle and Adams Dime Novel Digitization Project |publisher=Ulib.niu.edu |date=1949-05-30 |accessdate=2018-11-02}} The family moved to Wooster, Ohio in 1839, where she and her elder sister Frances (who also became a famous writer) attended a female seminary; they both published stories in local newspapers and, later, in the Home Journal. The sisters moved to New York City together in 1848, where they continued their literary pursuits.{{cite news
|title=Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
|work=Britannica
|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/627529/Metta-Victoria-Fuller-Victor
}}
Metta married editor and publishing pioneer Orville James Victor in 1856. Her sister Frances would later marry Victor's brother.{{cite journal|last=Morris|first=William A.|title=Historian of the Northwest. A Woman Who Loved Oregon: Frances Fuller Victor|journal=The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society|date=1 December 1902|volume=3|url=https://archive.org/stream/jstor-20609550/20609550#page/n1/mode/1up|accessdate=14 April 2013}} Metta served as editor for the Beadle & Company monthly Home and for Cosmopolitan Art Journal, and later anonymously published dime novels for her husband's series for Beadle.
She died of cancer on June 26, 1885, in Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey, and was buried in Ridgewood's Valleau Cemetery.
Works
Her noteworthy works are Alice Wilde (1860), an early dime novel; Maum Guinea, and Her Plantation "Children" (1861), expressing abolitionist sentiments; The Dead Letter (1866), the first full-length American work of crime fiction;{{Cite web|last=Corrigan|first=Maureen|date=1 December 2003|title=Queens of Pulp|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1526587|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-11-04|website=NPR.org|language=en}} The Figure Eight (1869); A Bad Boy's Diary (1880); and The Blunders of a Bashful Man (1881).
She also wrote under the names Corinne Cushman, Eleanor Lee Edwards, Metta Fuller, Walter T. Gray, Mrs. Orrin James, Rose Kennedy, Louis LeGrand, Mrs. Mark Peabody, The Singing Sybil, Mrs. Henry Thomas.{{cite web|url=https://chnm.gmu.edu/dimenovels/index.html%3Fp=594.html |editor-last=Carr |editor-first=Felicia L. |title=Metta Victor |website=American Women's Dime Novel Project: Dime Novels for Women, 1870-1920 |date= |accessdate=2024-01-29}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{wikisource|works=or}}
- Foxwell, Elizabeth, [https://web.archive.org/web/20140308233941/http://mysteryscenemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3486:metta-victoria-fuller-victor-aka&catid=38:profile&Itemid=191 "Metta Fuller Victor: A Sensational Life"], Mystery Scene, no. 81 (2003).
- {{Gutenberg author |id=9505| name=Metta Victoria Fuller Victor}}
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Metta Victoria Fuller Victor}}
- {{Internet Archive author |name=Seeley Regester}}
- {{Librivox author |id=10991}}
- Miranda Orso, Summer 2002: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130515194856/http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Victor__Metta_Fuller.html Bio from Pennsylvania Center for the Book]
- [https://chnm.gmu.edu/dimenovels/index.html%3Fp=594.html Bio from American Women's Dime Novel Project]
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Category:19th-century American novelists
Category:American crime fiction writers
Category:American women novelists
Category:Novelists from New York City
Category:19th-century American women writers
Category:Women crime fiction writers
Category:People from Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey
Category:19th-century pseudonymous writers
Category:Pseudonymous women writers
Category:American women magazine editors
Category:19th-century American short story writers
Category:American women short story writers
Category:American detective fiction writers
Category:Writers from Bergen County, New Jersey