The Patty Fairfield Series, by Carolyn Wells: a sort of reference page.
#1 Patty Fairfield (1901)
(Text at PG) (Review at RQ)
Patty Fairfield leaves her home with her father to spend a year visiting four sets of aunts, uncles and cousins and to learn about proportion.
#2 Patty at Home (1904)
(Text at PG) (Review at RQ) (Illustrations)
Patty and her father settle down in Vernondale and Patty learns about housekeeping. First appearances of Kenneth Harper and Mr. Hepworth.
#3 Patty in the City (1905)
(Review at RQ)
Patty moves to New York City and enrolls in the Oliphant School. First appearance of the Farringtons.
#4 Patty's Summer Days (1906)
(Text at PG) (Text at GoogleBooks) (Review at RQ)
Mr. Fairfield and Nan get married. Patty graduates from the Oliphant School and spends the summer traveling with the Farringtons and at Sandy Cove on Long Island.
#5 Patty in Paris (1907)
(Text at PG) (Review at RQ) (Illustrations)
The Farringtons take Patty to Paris with them.
#6 Patty's Friends (1908)
(Text at PG) (Review at RQ)
Patty makes friends in England, and helps some of them find a lost family fortune.
#7 Patty's Pleasure Trip (1909)
Patty gallivants around Italy and buys lots of souvenirs.
#8 Patty's Success (1910)
(Text at PG)
Patty manages to earn fifteen dollars all by herself. First appearance of Phil Van Reypen.
#9 Patty's Motor Car (1911)
Patty enters a contest and wins an electric car, which she names The Swift Camilla. First appearance of Mona Galbraith.
#10 Patty's Butterfly Days (1912)
(Text at PG)
Patty spends the summer at Spring Beach with Mona Galbraith. First appearance of Bill Farnsworth.
#11 Patty's Social Season (1913)
(Text at PG)
Patty makes her debut into society.
#12 Patty's Suitors (1914)
(Text at PG)
Patty doesn’t do a whole lot besides going to parties. First appearance of Kit Cameron.
#13 Patty's Romance (1915)
Patty is kidnapped! Also she goes on a trip with Phil Van Reypen and his aunt.
#14 Patty's Fortune (1916)
Aunty Van dies and Patty becomes very ill.
#15 Patty Blossom (1917)
(Text at PG)
Patty gets involved with disreputable artistic types. Then she gets engaged.
#16 Patty-Bride (1918)
Patty gets married during World War I.
#17 Patty and Azalea (1919)
(Text at PG)
Patty’s husband’s cousin Azalea is a wild western girl, given to stunt riding and baby-kidnapping.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE tha patty fairfield series and have all but two!
Which two? :)
I demand reviews of the rest of the series! I bought the whole series on the strength of the first reviews and loved them. I’ve already re-read all of the ones from the introduction of Bill, since that was my favorite storyline. Minus Patty and Azalea, which is sort of bizarre and out of place.
Patty and Azalea is pretty weird, but — stunt riding! baby-kidnapping! The one I find sort of out of place is Patty-Bride, because somehow Patty and Bill don’t act very much like themselves.
Eventually there will be reviews of the whole series up. I reread all the books occasionally, and I just stopped reviewing halfway through on the most recent pass.
To me the most bizarre part of Patty and Azalea is Phil the aristocrat getting with “Azalea.” Everyone’s flabbergasted that Patty would consider the indecency of light opera, while “Azalea” has been seen by the whole country in a Western. Plus she’s abrasive and completely lacking in social graces. I hope his aunt haunts him for that.
The second weirdest part is my main problem with Patty-Bride, which is that Bill stops being blunt and fun and unconventional and turns into a humorless middle-aged man. Who forbids (?!) Patty to hang out with Bohemians, dance barefoot, appear on stage, and, most ridiculously, ride in airplanes. I think he’s supposed to be seen as rescuing her from these foolish scrapes, but it comes off as controlling and presumptive.
As a huge fan of the Beverly Gray, Adventure Girls, and Doris Force series, I couldn’t really get or support the anti-flying stance. It also seems out of step with the times (all these other series books fawn over pilots)–or maybe there was a shift in perception between the ’10s and the ’30s? I tend to forget how early the Patty books were.
Azalea was supposed to be unconventional and cool, which totally works for, say, L.T. Meade, but not for Carolyn Wells. One of the things I love about Patty is that while she’s always fun to read about, she’s also always completely within the bounds of good taste. But I can’t say I feel too sorry for Phil, because I never liked him very much. Actually, though, Phil and Azalea starting married life haunted by the ghost of Mrs. Van Reypen is a cool concept, in a sitcom-ish way.
All the fun goes out of Patty and Bill’s relationship when they get engaged. I adore Bill, and I’m okay with him being overbearing when he’s, say, carrying Patty away from Sam Blaney & Co. because she danced barefoot, but when he’s all disapproving of her when they’re married, it comes off a bit creepy.
It’s early for airplanes, but not that early. I think L. Frank Baum had already done his girl pilot series by then. That part did bother me, but more because of Patty’s lack of adventurousness than because of Bill’s objections. But riding in an airplane was certainly more socially acceptable than going on stage, which was totally out of the question for a wealthy, unmarried society girl in the teens.
I mentioned these books to a friend the other day and she sent me the link to this site. The Patty Fairfield books were my favorites when I was a girl–I had an almost-complete set (missing only Patty’s Motor Car and Patty and Azalea) that had been my mother’s when she was young. We didn’t have a lot of books in our house and I read these over and over. Decades later, I’m confident that I could quote most of the last chapter of “Patty Blossom” from memory! In my thirties I had a used bookstore find me copies of the two books that I was missing.
I loved that stuffy old Phil fell in love with the highly unconventional Azalea–and thought it a bit of a cheat that she was revealed at the end to be a Boston Adams, and not Bill’s cousin at all.
I loved Bill throughout, although I thought he was a bit stuffy about the barefoot dancing. His forbidding airplane-riding was because it was dangerous (and indeed, Patty’s scarf gets tangled in the propellor and she nearly strangles).
For me the best part about these books is that they reveal details about life in their era–in the first book telephones and automobiles are rarities (the girls get about in a pony cart). You can see society changing as the books go along.
You should also know that Carolyn Wells was best known as a satirist, so who knows how much of these books was written tongue-in-cheek. Patty is rather too good to be true!
I agree that Azalea’s real origins were a cop-out, but I didn’t like her very much, and I was never really a fan of Phil, so I thought they deserved each other. I also adore Bill, complete with stuffiness, right up until Patty-Bride. Somehow the absent fiance isn’t as romantic as the the suitor who is always on his way in or out of town.
The historical detail is fun, isn’t it? In one — maybe Patty Blossom, when Patty goes with Mona and Roger and Phil to check out Mona’s Spring Beach house? — they take a thermos with them on a picnic and they’d only been invented a couple of years before. Also, isn’t it awesome when the accessories for Patty’s car include a flower vase?
I do know that Carolyn Wells was a satirist. She had three almost separate and overlapping writing careers — one as a humorist, one as a writer of children’s fiction, and one as a mystery novelist. Her children’s books actually brought her the least fame, while her nonsense verse made her America’s foremost female humorist and her mysteries made her “the dean of American mystery writers” in the 1930s.
I think she less serious about the Patty books than about almost anything else she wrote. Her Marjorie books are a little bit autobiographical sometimes, and the Two Little Women books tend toward the moral, but with the Patty books she definitely plays around with the conventions of girls’ literature.
I also have most of the Marjorie books and maybe a couple of dozen of her mysteries–courtesy of the used-book dealer who, after I had her find the two Patty books I was missing, decided that I must want every book Carolyn Wells ever wrote! The mysteries are also interesting from a historical perspective. For instance, I recall that one plot revolves around a girl who, because she was adopted, was not eligible to inherit her parents’ estate when they died without wills. I have to assume that this was true at the time although it seems like an odd distinction to make.
It does seem like an odd distinction, but maybe the issue was that she wasn’t legally adopted? I think the difference has less to do with inheritance laws than that people could have a kid brought to live with them without making any legal arrangements. Another thing I find interesting is that usually the murder releases a young woman from some sort of unpleasant position, although I guess the one you’re talking about presents an opposite scenario.
I kind of do want every book Carolyn Wells ever wrote, except for the nonsense verse ones, which don’t really do much for me, but I’ve never come across one of her mystery novels in a used bookstore. The only ones I’ve read are the ones available online. Which ones have you got?
Oh you glorious people! To have finally found fellow Patty aficionados! My story is that we had one book, “Butterfly Days,” that my mom had carried with her from childhood. I read it so many times, and would spend hours looking at the page that listed the rest of the series and try to figure out from the titles what happened to Patty.
One day we were in an antique shop and there they were- the whole delicious set of ‘em for like a buck a piece. I guess I was in 9th or 10th grade. I read them so many times they fell apart, and I have been working to replace them since.
I am so much of who I am because of Pattty! What a totally cool chick she was for the times, and I have so often (even today at age 44) found myself when in a quandary wondering, WWPD (what would Patty do?!)
I think I have never been truly happy in love because I have not yet found my Bill. I have had my Phillip, and my Kenneth and even my Mr. Hepworth, but no Bill. I even once dated a Texan just to see if maybe…
Ok, so obviously I am obsessed; I have even had dreams that the books were made into a movie that I was watching! But the rest of you sound pretty ga ga too, and I love it!
I have a number of Carolyn Well’s other books as well. One of my favourites is “Ask Me a Question.” It is 180 pages of questions to be answered such as:
Does lion-farming pay?
Who is reported to have fiddled while Rome burned?
What is threnody?
and the answers can be found in the back of the book. Of course, many of the questions are based around popular topics of the time, which makes it all the more fascinating.
Rock on Patty lovers! i am so happy to have found you!
For me, one of the coolest things about this blog is that it has become the corner of the the internet for Patty Fairfield fans. I’m really glad you’ve found it, and I’d love any suggestions about additional content that you may have.
Also, while it never would have occurred to me to refer to Patty as “a totally cool chick,” it’s kind of wonderfully appropriate. There may be no cooler girl anywhere in children’s literature.
http://flickr.com/photos/27245196@N02/2945024583/
if it is of any interest to anyone, I was able to obtain this signature of Carolyn Wells in an auction. I have it framed and on my desk. She uses her full (married) name to include the Houghton. It is dated 1923.
I am wanting to find the whole set for my wife , if that is possible. Is there someone who can point me toward that goal?
magicmann0@yahoo.com if so
Thanks
Being a fan of both Patty (and Marjorie) … thought I’d pop in and say how great to find all these Patty books in one spot. I started with the fourth one that I picked up at some book sale… and have since tracked down some of the others to read, but there are ones here I have yet to explore.
this is so great!
The fourth one was my first, too! I’ve since collected all the rest, but I hope they’ll also all be available online sometime soon. I’d do it myself if I had a book scanner or something.
“Phil butter and eggs” ;) OMG, I can’t believe I found this! I used to read these every summer when I was visiting my grandmother in New York. I loved the scene when Patty had to keep the letter secret from the spy trying to coerce her into revealing it. Lots of good memories from these books. Wow.
I think everyone who has ever read these book must have good memories of them. They’re kind of special like that ;)