Dorothy Canfield

In 2017, an Abenaki educator lobbied the Vermont Department of Libraries to pull Fisher's name from the children's literature award created in the state over half a century ago to honor her. Judy Dow claimed that Fisher stereotyped French Canadians and Native Americans in her works of fiction, and that she may have been part of the eugenics movement that promoted cleansing Vermont of people considered genetically less desirable in the 1920s and 1930s. Other voices discussed putting Fisher's characterizations in context of the times in which she lived. Yet others suggested that because Fisher's works are no longer widely read nor is her name well recognized, perhaps it has become time to retire the title of the literature award. No direct connection with the eugenics movement has been established. The Vermont State Board of Libraries recommended dropping her name from the award on grounds that "it was no longer relevant to today's young people". The state librarian announced in 2019 that the award would receive a new name for 2020.

Edit: March 29, 2016, by Vivian Scott Hixson, daughter of Sarah (Sally) Fisher Scott and John Paul Scott. Vivian Scott's book The Potted Witch was published (as noted) under her maiden name. After this, in 1995, The University of Missouri Press published a book of her cartoons (most of them previously published in The Chronicle of Higher Education), titled "He Looks Too Happy to be an Assistant Professor"; this book was published under the name Vivian Scott Hixson. In 2014, she published another collection of cartoons with Ex Libris, called "They Look Too Happy to be Temporary Adjunct Assistant Professors."

Cather wrote a short story that may have satirized Canfield's mother, called "Flavia and Her Artists"—sparking ten years of interrupted friendship between Canfield Fisher and Cather. Other writers who corresponded with Canfield Fisher included Henry Seidel Canby, Richard Wright, Heywood Broun, Witter Bynner, Isak Dinesen, and Robert Frost.

Canfield Fisher died at the age of 79 in Arlington, Vermont in 1958.

The Raid at Cabanatuan was a great success, with the Rangers suffering only two fatalities. Captain Fisher was one, mortally wounded by a mortar shell. As he lay dying the next day, his last words were "Did we get them all out?" He died on Luzon, January 31, 1945.

Dorothy Canfield (Fisher) exerted an influence upon the literary taste of American readers as one of 5 judges, and the only woman, on the selection board for the popular Book of the Month Club which started in 1926. She was the daughter of artist Flavia Camp and college professor and administrator James Hulme Canfield. Under the tutelage of her rebellious mother who chafed at the midwestern towns where her husband taught, she was exposed to the cultures of Europe with tours of galleries in France, Italy, and Spain.

After the war, she was the head of the U.S. committee that led to the pardoning of conscientious objectors in 1921, and sponsored financial and emigration assistance to Jewish educators, professionals, and intellectuals.

Canfield Fisher engaged in social activism in many aspects of education and politics. She managed the first adult education program in the U.S. She did war-relief work in 1917 in France, establishing the Bidart Home for Children for refugees and organizing an effort to print books in Braille for blinded combat veterans. In 1919, she was appointed to the State Board of Education of Vermont to help improve rural public education. She spent years promoting education and rehabilitation/reform in prisons, especially women's prisons.

Another concern of Canfield Fisher was her war work. She followed her husband to France in 1916 during World War I and while raising her young children in Paris worked to establish a Braille press for blinded veterans. She also established a convalescent home for refugee French children from the invaded areas; continuing her relief work after the war, she earned citations of appreciation from Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and the government of Denmark.

James (Jimmy) was born in 1913 and became a surgeon and captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. He served with the Alamo Scouts for three months at the end of 1944, following which he was attached to a Ranger unit which carried out the raid to free POWs imprisoned at Cabanatuan in the Philippines.

In 1911, Canfield Fisher visited the "children's houses" in Rome established by Maria Montessori. Much impressed, she joined the cause to bring the method back to the U.S., translating Montessori's book into English and writing five of her own: three nonfiction and two novels.

Sally was born in 1909. When her mother died in 1958, Mrs. John Paul Scott lived in Bar Harbor, Maine and had written 18 children's books as Sally Scott. Canfield Fisher's granddaughter Vivian Scott was also writing children's books and at least one had been published, evidently.

Marrying John Fisher in 1907 she settled into a more rural scene as a freelance author and farmer in Arlington, Vermont. One of her projects was translating Italian educational writer Maria Montessori into English and promoting the Montessori method for US parents. During WWI she contributed journalism on the conflict. Her concern about the after effects of the war on democratic culture informed her participation in meetings of the Book of the Month program in New York City, where she traveled from Vermont. Her feminist oriented novel The Homemaker was turned into a Hollywood film. She became popular enough among housewives grappling with their modern roles that a Dorothy Canfield club was formed in Connersville, Indiana.

After a course of study at the Sorbonne in 1899, Dorothy completed a PHD in languages at Columbia where her father would eventually relocate as library head. She would become a librarian herself at New York City's Horace Mann School.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (February 17, 1879 – November 9, 1958) was an educational reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early 20th century. She strongly supported women's rights, racial equality, and lifelong education. Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the ten most influential women in the United States. In addition to bringing the Montessori method of child-rearing to the U.S., she presided over the country's first adult education program and shaped literary tastes by serving as a member of the Book of the Month Club selection committee from 1925 to 1951.