Author:Frances Fuller Victor

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Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902)

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American historian, novelist, and poet. Pen names: Florence Fane, Dorothy D. Victor was described as "the first Oregon historian to gain regional and national attention" and is known as "the mother of Oregon history." She began her literary career in the east, as a poet and an author of dime novels. Upon her arrival in Oregon she turned her attention to recording the region's history; she was the first Oregon historian to insist on strong research practices. She was the first to challenge the story that Oregon pioneer Marcus Whitman had led the first large-scale migration to the Oregon Country, and that he had played a significant role in "saving" Oregon to the United States; this position kept her embroiled in controversy for the last several decades of her life, fueling debate among scholars as distant as Chicago and Connecticut. She wrote several volumes of history that were incorrectly attributed to her employer, Hubert Howe Bancroft.

Frances Fuller Victor

Fiction

• as Frances A. Fuller: Anizetta, the Guajira; or, The Creole of Cuba (1848) (external scan)
• as Frances Fuller Barritt: East and West; or, The Beauty of Willard's Mill (later republished as "The Far West...") (1862) Internet Archive identifier : 04297674.1621.emory.edu
• as Frances Fuller Barritt: Alicia Newcome, or The Land Claim: A Tale of the Upper Missouri (1862) (transcription project)
• The New Penelope: And Other Stories and Poems (1877)

Poetry

The following lists published works containing Victor's poems. For individual poems, see Index of poem titles.

• Poems of Sentiment and Imagination (1851) as Frances A. Fuller, with Metta Victoria Fuller
• Poetry selections (with biographical intro) in The Poets and Poetry of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices (1860)
• Poems section in The New Penelope (1877)
• Poems (1900)

History and non-fiction

• The River of the West: The Adventures of Joe Meek (1870) (transcription project)
  • Reviewed in the Sacramento Union (1870)
• All Over Oregon and Washington (1872) Internet Archive identifier : cu31924028885867
• The Women's War with Whisky; Or, Crusading in Portland , pamphlet, 60p., 1874.
  • Contemporaneous review in the New Northwest.
  • Briefly reviewed in Daily Astorian (external scan)
• Eleven Years in the Rocky Mountains & A History of the Sioux War (1877)
  • Part I: Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier
  • Part II: A History of the Sioux War, and a Life of Gen. George A. Custer, with a Full Account of his Last Battle
• Under contract with Hubert Howe Bancroft:
  • History of Oregon in two volumes (1886, 1888)

    (v. 1, ch. 13 transcription complete)

  • History of California: 1846–1848 (1890)
  • History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana: 1845–1889 (1890)
  • History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540–1888 (1890)
  • History of the Pacific states of North America (1890)
• Atlantis Arisen: or, Talks of a tourist about Oregon and Washington (1891)
• The Early Indian Wars of Oregon (transcription project) (1894) (published at the direction of the Oregon Legislature; see House Concurrent Resolution No. 22, 1891.)
  • Covered in the Hood River Glacier: "A Woman Historian," and in the Evening Capital Journal (external scan)

In periodicals

• "Manifest Destiny in the West" (1869), featured in The Overland Monthly
• social columns and other items for the San Francisco Call, some under the penname "Dorothy D" (mid-1870s; 1890s)
• "The Literature of Oregon." The West Shore 1 (1876)
• "Did Dr. Whitman Save Oregon?" in The Californian (1880)
• "Dr. Marcus Whitman: An Estimate of the Services Rendered Oregon by the Pioneer and Martyr", The Oregonian, November 6, 1884. (transcription project)
• "Northern Seaside Resorts" in Overland Monthly (1894)
• "Autobiographical Sketch" in the Oregon Statesman (June 16, 1895)
• "How Oregon Was Saved", San Francisco Daily Call (July 1895)
• "Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor vs. Dr. O. W. Nixon of Chicago", San Francisco Daily Call (September 1895)
• "Early California Literature, San Francisco Call (April 19, 1896)
• H. S. Lyman: Oregonian/1897/Mrs. Victor's Latest Work: Her Book on "The Early Indian Wars of Oregon."
  • Minto's response, Oregonian, March 19, 1897. (external scan)
  • Victor's response to Lyman, Oregonian, March 25, 1897. (external scan)
  • Lyman's response (external scan)
• "She Defends Bancroft", Oregonian, December 22, 1901

In the Oregon Historical Quarterly:

• "Dr. Elliott Coues" in Oregon Historical Quarterly, 1 (1900)
• "Our Public Land System and Its Relation to Education in the United States" in Oregon Historical Quarterly, 1 (1900)
• "Flotsom and Jetsom of the Pacific: The Owyhee, the Sultana, and the May Dacre" in Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2 (1901)
• "Hall J. Kelley: One of the Fathers of Oregon" in Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2 (1901)
• "The First Oregon Cavalry" in Oregon Historical Quarterly, 3 (1902)
• Review: ""The American Fur Trade in the Far West"" in Oregon Historical Quarterly, 3 (1902)
• Review: McLoughlin and Old Oregon: A Chronicle, by Eva Emery Dye (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co. 1900. Pp. viii, 382). The American Historical Review, Volume 6, Issue 1, 1 October 1900, Pages 148–150, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/6.1.148

Works about Victor

• Hailed as "Our Lady Historian" early in her career in Oregon: Sacramento Daily Union: Letter from Oregon. 1865.
• "Frances Fuller Victor," in A Woman of the Century, (ed.) by Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Buffalo: Charles Wells Moulton (1893)
• A Woman Historian, in the Hood River Glacier, 1895.
• Mrs. Victor Dead, The Morning Oregonian, November 15, 1902.
• Historian of the Northwest (obituary from the Oregon Historical Quarterly, volume 3). (1902)
• Obituary in the Sunday Oregonian
• funeral notice in the Oregonian
• Interesting comment in the Oregonian following her death
• The Origin and Authorship of the Bancroft Pacific States Publications: A History of a History (part 1), concerning her career, in OHQ volume 4. (1903)
• Alfred Powers: Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 42/Scrapbook of a Historian - Frances Fuller Victor (1942)
• Hazel Mills: Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 62/The Emergence of Frances Fuller Victor-Historian (1961)