Prolific best-selling author Grace Livingston Hill had roots in Steuben, Allegany counties

Some time back we sort of stumbled onto the fact that Grace Livingston Hill used to live in Steuben County. Once upon a time she was far and away one of the best-selling authors in America.

Grace was born in Wellsville, in Allegany County, in 1865. She lived in Campbell, in Steuben County, from September 1883 to September 1885 (ages 18 to 20) while her father (Reverend Charles Montgomery Livingston) was pastor of the Presbyterian church – later an antique mall, and later still the site of a dollar store. Grace taught Sunday School, and she also briefly attended Elmira College.

Grace’s father was frequently troubled by severe problems with his throat – bad news for a preacher – and they moved to Florida after leaving Campbell, hoping for a better climate.

There Grace wrote her first story, later expanded to a book, to finance a family trip to Chautauqua Institute. Her mother, her father, and especially her aunt were all published authors. Aunt Isabella Macdonald Alden actually published a story about a visit to Campbell, stressing the lovely Sunday school children, and the charming DL&W depot.

Aunt Isabella wrote copiously, often under a pen name, Pansy. Professional librarians sneered at works by “Pansy,” which did not meet their standards for "Serious Literature." By the time Grace came along librarians were getting a little more relaxed, or at least more resigned.

Which was a good thing! Because Grace’s output outshone the rest of the family combined, even when you include Grace’s daughter’s work. “GLH” published over a hundred books between 1887 (A Chautauqua Idyll) and 1947 (Mary Arden). The exact count can be argued a little, but we make it at 116 – Danielle Steel is now up around 190.

Grace’s readers ran into eager millions, who persevered past (and finally overcame, or maybe overwhelmed) disgruntled librarians. Perhaps Jan Karon would be a rough contemporary parallel. Grace’s books had a spiritual tinge, or at least they were wholesome, and her primary readers were women, many of whom still fondly recall long nights under the covers with a flashlight, unable to tear away from the story and the characters.

The professionally hip have been known to call her Grace Livingston Seagull, but she being dead (since 1947) yet speaketh. A few years ago I did an author check of our own Southern Tier Library System catalogue, revealing FOURTEEN PAGES of entries for Grace Livingston Hill.

To compare with other hyper-prolific writers, the system showed 46 pages for Danielle Steel, 29 for John Grisham, 23 for Isaac Asimov, 13 for Frances Hodgson Burnett, 10 for P. G. Wodehouse, 7 for Robert Silverberg, 5 for Barbara Cartland, and 1 for Horatio Alger. (These figures included books, e-books, audio books, movies, etc.)

By the way, “Pansy” (aunt Isabella Macdonald Alden) also got a page of results.

Of course it’s not surprising that contemporary authors would be better represented, and that interest in the older ones fades away over time. So just for the fun of it, I decided to “equalize” all that, and get a crude measure of relative popularity, through multiplying the number of pages in each listing by the number of years since the author’s death – using “1” as the multiple for the three then-living authors.

With that system we got:

• Burnett 13 (pages of listings) x 92 (years since death) = 2096 “popularity points”

• Hill 14 x 69 = 966

• Asimov 23 x 24 = 552

• Wodehouse 10 x 41 = 410

• Alger 1 x 117 = 117

• “Pansy” 1 x 86 = 86

• Cartland 5 x 16 = 80

• Steel 46 x 1 = 46

• Grisham 29 x 1 = 29

• Silverberg 7 x 1 = 7

While this calculation put Grace Livingston Hill well behind Frances Hodgson Burnett (most famous for The Secret Garden, A Little Princess/Sara Crewe, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, all of which have been made into multiple movies), it also put her decidedly ahead of Asimov and far beyond any of the others.

Since space on library shelves is limited, and new books keep coming out in floods, the fact that GLH still had hundreds of volumes on hand locally means that they’re still very much in demand.

Our grateful acknowledgements to Daena Creel of the Grace Livingston Hill Project for details on the Livingston family’s life in Campbell.

-- Kirk House, of the Steuben County Historical Society, writes a local history column appearing in The Leader and The Spectator.

This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Author Grace Livingston Hill had roots in Steuben, Allegany counties