Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst

In the first half of the twentieth century, Fannie Hurst was known as much for the startling particulars of her extraordinary life as for writing stories that penetrated the human heart. Hers is the story of a Jewish girl from the Middle West turned dynamic celebrity author, the kid down the street who spoke her dreams out loud and then managed to fulfill every one of them.

With stories and novels such as Humoresque, Back Street, and Imitation of Life, Fannie Hurst reigned as the leading “sob sister” of American fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. Her name on the cover of a magazine was enough to sell out an issue. She wrote of immigrants and shopgirls, love, drama, and trauma, and in no time the title “World’s Highest-Paid Short-Story Writer” attached itself to her name. Hollywood fattened her bank account, making her works into films thirty-one times in forty years.