Nathaniel Parker Willis, also known as N. P. Willis, was an American writer, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children's nurse.
Portrait of Willis by Mathew Brady studios, circa mid-1850s
A young Nathaniel Parker Willis
American Scenery by N. P. Willis with illustration by William Henry Bartlett, 1840.
Willis became the highest-paid magazine writer in America.
Fanny Fern, was an American novelist, children's writer, humorist, and newspaper columnist in the 1850s to 1870s. Her popularity has been attributed to a conversational style and sense of what mattered to her mostly middle-class female readers.
Portrait of Fanny Fern
Fanny Fern's grave