Jean Webster (1876 – 1916) was the pen name of Alice Jane Chandler Webster who was born and lived most of her life in New York State. Writing was probably in her blood for her great-uncle was Mark Twain who wrote the classic adventure books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. She was a very bad speller at school and when a teacher asked her on whose authority she spelt words as she did, she replied ‘Webster’s’ – a pun on her own name and that of the great American dictionary-writer.
Jean had a very privileged upbringing and graduated from Vassar, a top American college, in 1901. She made many charity visits to the poor and became convinced that less well-off children could do well in life. She developed this belief with humour and imagination in her most famous book, Daddy-Long-Legs. In the novel a young orphan is sent to college by a kind, anonymous benefactor, nicknamed ‘Daddy Long-Legs’, and her letters to him paint a moving picture of orphanage life and a portrait of a child’s mind.
Daddy Long-Legs, published in 1912, is still in print and attracting new readers. It has been made into a play and several films – the most famous being the 1955 version in which Fred Astaire starred. Jean married in 1915 and divided her time between a New York City apartment overlooking Central Park and an estate in the Berkshire Hills. Sadly she died the following year, the day after her baby daughter was born.
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