Daughter of an editor and novelist, and named after a character in her father's most famous novel, The Story of a Country Town (1883), Mateel Howe Farnham (1883-1957) wrote a number of popular novels herself. Little is known about her education, except that she attended Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington, D.C. She married an engineer who wrote three humorous autobiographical books about their country home and garden. Her first novel, published rather late in life, won a $10,000 prize.
Of her novels, the three set in the Midwest are her best work. Rebellion (1927), her prize-winning first novel, has an interesting background and the fascination of autobiographical revelations. Dedicated to her mother, "whom I have never known to do a selfish or an unkind thing," the novel clearly exposes some of the tensions and morbidity of the Howe family life. Like Howe, the father in the novel is a depressed and bitter man who takes out his unhappiness on his family. While the family sketched in this book, the Burrells, does not parallel the Howe family in many outward circumstances, the central conflict of the story also pits the strong-minded girl Jacqueline against her domineering father. Set in New Concord, Kansas, the novel champions the right of the daughter to live her own life—go to college, get a job, and marry the man of her choice. Her vain, egotistical father would like her to be a Southern belle. After many conflicts, she marries suitably, despite her father's abnormal jealousy, and gets her inheritance by blackmailing him.
Farnham's two other Midwest novels, Lost Laughter (1933) and Great Riches (1934), both focus on the rise of young men in country towns, with a suitable complement of domineering parents and scheming women.
Three other novels are set in the Susquehanna valley. Marsh-Fire (1928) is the story of another scheming woman, who gets ahead in business by abject flattery of males. Wild Beauty (1930), made into a movie (Wayward) in 1932 by Paramount, is another tale of domineering parents and children seeking their own lives. Farnham's last novel, The Tollivers (1944), mixes social comedy with eccentric characters.
