Blanche Willis Howard

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Blanche Willis Howard (1847-1898, aka Blanche W. Teuffel) was a best-selling American novelist who lived most of her productive years in southern Germany. Born in Bangor, Maine, the daughter of D.M. Howard, her breakthrough novel was One Summer (Boston, 1875), set in the coastal town of Wiscasset, Maine. In 1877 she went to Germany on assignment to write travel articles for the Boston Evening Transcript and stayed there the rest of her life, settling in Stuttgart and opening a finishing school for young girls. Eventually she married (in 1890) Baron von Teufel, the court physician to King Charles I of Württemberg, thereby becoming the Baronness von Teufel. She spent the last years of her life in Munich.^[1]

Howard authored a total of 14 books, most of them novels, and with the exception of One Summer, all were written in Germany and sent to Boston and New York publishers. She was one of only a handful of American novelists of this era to write from abroad, the iconic example being Henry James. Her most notable books were One Year Abroad (Boston, 1877); Aunt Serena (Boston, 1881); Guenn: A Wave on the Breton Coast (Boston, 1884); Aulney Tower (Boston, 1886); Tony, the Maid (a novelette first published serially in Harper's); The Open Door (Boston and New York, 1889); and Seven on the Highway (1897), a collection of short stories.^[2]

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