Helen Reimensnyder Martin (October 18, 1868 – June 29, 1939) was an American author.
She was born on October 18, 1868, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Helen was the fifth child born to Reverend Cornelius and Henrietta Thurman Reimensnyder.
Her father was a German immigrant and a Lutheran pastor who worked in Ohio before settling in Lancaster.
Because her parents expected a boy and wanted to name her William Allen after her mother’s uncle, a governor of Ohio, Helen was called “Bill” by those who knew her.
She was a student at Swarthmore and Radcliffe Colleges.
In 1899, Helen Reimensnyder married a music teacher named Frederic C. Martin.
The couple settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Around 1904, Helen gave birth to her first child, who died in infancy.
The couple had two more children, a boy and a girl.
In 1936, Frederic C. Martin died.
During her lifetime, Helen Martin published 35 novels and numerous short stories between 1896 and 1939.
Her work focused on the oppression of women and can be split into two topics:
Sophisticated white high society and rural Pennsylvania Dutch society.
Her high society novels were not successful until after she achieved success with her more ethnic local color novels.
According to Beverly Seaton, Helen Martin used the Pennsylvania Dutch to critique society and advance her feminist viewpoint because their culture was unfamiliar to most Americans, making it safer for her to express controversial opinions about the rights of women and children in her stories.
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