"I find myself at twenty-nine exactly where at fourteen I had planned I would be." So Miss Hurst, in a sketch written for the American Magazine (March, 1919), sums up the story of a remarkable literary career.

Fannie Hurst was born in St. Louis, October 19, 1889. She attended the public schools, and began to write—with the firm intention of becoming an author—before she was out of grammar school. "At fourteen," she tells us in the article just referred to, "the one pigeon-hole of my little girl's desk was already stuffed with packets of rejected verse which had been furtively written, furtively mailed, and still more furtively received back again by heading off the postman a block before he reached our door." To this dream of authorship—the secret of which was carefully guarded from her family—she sacrificed her play and even her study hours. The first shock to her family came on St. Valentine's Day. There was to be a party that night, her first real party. A new dress was ready for the occasion, and a boy escort was to call for her in a cab. It happened that Valentine's day fell on Saturday, and Saturday was her time for writing. That day she turned from poetry to fiction, and was just in the middle of her first story when it came time to get ready for the party. She did not get ready. The escort arrived, cab and all; the family protested, but all to no purpose. She finished the story, mailed it, three weeks later received it back, and began her second story. All through her high school days she mailed a manuscript every Saturday, and they always came back.

After high school she entered Washington University, St. Louis, graduating in 1909. And still she kept writing. To one journal alone she sent during those four years, thirty-four short stories. And they all came back—all but one. Just before graduation she sold her first article, a little sketch first written as a daily theme, which was published in a local weekly, and brought her three dollars. This was the total result of eight years' literary effort. So quite naturally she determined to go on.

She announced to her family that she was going to New York City to become a writer. There was a stormy discussion in the Hurst family, but it ended in her going away, with a bundle of manuscripts in her trunk, to brave the big city alone. She found a tiny furnished room and set forth to besiege the editors' offices. One evening she returned, to find the house being raided, a patrol wagon at the curb, and the lodgers being hustled into it. She crossed the street and walked on, and never saw her bag or baggage again. By the help of the Young Women's Christian Association she found another room, in different surroundings, and set out again to make the round of the editorial offices.

Then followed months and months of "writing, rewriting, rejections, and re-rejections." From home came letters now beseeching, now commanding her to return, and at length cutting off her allowance. So she returned her rented typewriter and applied at a theatrical agency. She secured a small part in a Broadway company, and then came her first acceptance of a story, with an actual check for thirty dollars. She left the stage and rented another typewriter,—but it was six months before she sold another story.

In all this time she dipped deeply into the great stream of the city's life. To quote her own account:

For a month I lived with an Armenian family on West Broadway, in a room over a tobacconist's shop. I apprenticed myself as a sales-girl in New York's most gigantic department store. Four and one-quarter yards of ribbon at seven and a half cents a yard proved my Waterloo, and my resignation at the end of one week was not entirely voluntary. I served as waitress in one of New York's most gigantic chain of white-tiled lunch rooms. I stitched boys' pants in a Polish sweatshop, and lived for two days in New York's most rococo hotel. I took a graduate course in Anglo Saxon at Columbia University, and one in lamp-shade making at Wanamaker's: wormed into a Broadway musical show as wardrobe girl, and went out on a self-appointed newspaper assignment to interview the mother of the richest baby in the world.

All these experiences yielded rich material for stories, but no one would print them. Her money was gone; so was a diamond ring that had been a Commencement present; it seemed as if there was nothing left but to give up the struggle and go back home. Then, just as she had struck bottom, an editor actually told her she could write, and followed up his remark by buying three stories. Since that time she has never had a story rejected, and her checks have gone up from two figures into four. And so, at the end of a long fight, as she says, "I find myself at twenty-nine exactly where at fourteen I had planned I would be. And best of all, what popular success I am enjoying has come not from pandering to popular demand or editorial policy, but from pandering to my own inner convictions, which are like little soul-tapers, lighting the way."

All her work has been in the form of the short story. Her first book, Just Around the Corner, published in 1914, is a collection of stories dealing with the life of working girls in a city. Every Soul Hath Its Song is a similar collection; the title suggests the author's outlook upon life. Some one has said that in looking at a puddle of water, you may see either the mud at the bottom or the sky reflected on its surface. Miss Hurst sees the reflection of the sky. The Boston Transcript said of this book: "Here at last is a story writer who is bent on listening to the voices of America and interpreting them." Gaslight Sonatas, from which "Bitter-Sweet" is taken, showed an advance over her earlier work. Two of the stories from this volume were selected by Mr. O'Brien for his volume, Best Short Stories, for 1916 and 1917. Humoresque, her latest work, continues her studies of city types, drawn from New York and St. Louis. The stories show her insight into character and her graphic descriptive power. Miss Hurst is also the author of two plays, The Land of the Free and The Good Provider.