Firth Haring Fabend

LAND SO FAIR, Firth's new novel, just published!

I was born in Tappan, N.Y., in 1937. I am a graduate of Barnard College and have a doctorate in American Studies from New York University.

My first published work was an essay submitted by my Freshman English professor to the College Board Review, perhaps the event that directed me to academic book publishing after college. After a year as an editorial assistant, I began writing novels on the side, evenings and weekends. I found a literary agent for my first effort. (Fortunately, he was unable to sell it.) My second novel, The Best of Intentions, was published by William Morrow and in England by Macmillan. From there I went on to publish four further novels, one of which, The Woman Who Went Away, is now “back in print” in the Authors Guild/i-universe program.

My doctoral dissertation, A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800, was published by Rutgers University Press, as was a second history on the Dutch in New York and New Jersey in the nineteenth century: Zion on the Hudson. I have published numerous articles on the Dutch in America, listed below, and am a Fellow of the New Netherland Project and of The Holland Society of New York.

Novels published, 1968-1985:

The Best of Intentions (New York: William Morrow, 1968; London: Macmillan, 1968).

Three Women (New York: Belmont-Tower Books), 1972.

A Perfect Stranger (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973; London: New English Library, 1974; other countries, 1974-77).

The Woman Who Went Away(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981); (i-universe, 2000).

Books Published Since 1988:

Tappan: 300 Years, 1686-1986 (Tappantown Historical Society, 1988). (General Editor.)

A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1991; paperback edition, 1998).

Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000; rprt., 2005).

A Catch of Grandmothers (A historical poem)(Historical Society of Rockland County, 2006).

Land So Fair (A historical novel), 2008.

Articles and Chapters Published Since 1990:

"The Dutch American Farmer: 'A Mad Rabble' or ‘Gentlemen Standing Up for Their Rights?’" de Halve Maen (Journal of the Holland Society of New York), 63:1 (1990), 7-10.

"'According to Holland Custome': Jacob Leisler and the Loockermans Estate Feud," de Halve Maen, 67:1 (1994), 1-8.

"Suffer the Little Children: Evangelical Childrearing in Reformed Dutch Households, New York and New Jersey, 1826-1876," de Halve Maen, 68:2(1995), 26-33.

"The Synod of Dort and the Persistence of Dutchness in 19th-Century New York and New Jersey," New York History, 77 (July 1996), 273-300.

"William Bertholf," American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Also articles on four other seventeenth-century Reformed clergymen in ibid.

"Pious and Powerful: The Evangelical Mother in Reformed Dutch Households, New York and New Jersey, 1826-1876," in Patterns and Portraits: A History of Women in the Reformed Church in America (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).

"New Light on New Netherland," de Halve Maen, 73:3(Fall 2000), 51- 55.

"Church and State, Hand in Hand: Compassionate Calvinism in New Netherland," de Halve Maen, 75:1(Spring 2002), 3-8.

“Noblewomen, City Women, and Grandmothers: Female Role Models for the Huguenot Woman in Early New York,” 400th Anniversary Commemoration of the Edict of Nantes (New York: Huguenot Society of America, 2002).

“’Nieu Amsterdam’: A Copper Engraving from the 17th Century,” New York History, 85:3 (Summer 2004), 233-246.

"Sex and the City: Relations Between Men and Women in New Netherland." Revisiting New Netherland: Perspectives on Early Dutch America, ed. Joyce D. Goodfriend (Herndon, Va.: Brill, 2005).

"The Dutch American Farmer: 'A Mad Rabble' or ‘Gentlemen Standing Up for Their Rights?’" (revised version), The Hudson Valley Regional Review, 22:2 (Spring 2006), 79-90.

“From Jan Claus’ Land to t’Greynbos to Blauveltville to Blauvelt,” South of the Mountains (New City, NY: Historical Society of Rockland County), 50:2 (April-June 2006), 3-18.

“Pierre Cresson: Pierre Le Gardinier,” de Halve Maen, 79:2 (Summer 2006), 34-36.

“Cosyn Gerritsen van Putten: New Amsterdam’s Wheelwright,” de Halve Maen, 80:2 (Summer 2007), 23-30.

“Jan Pietersen Haring, 1633-1683: Sightings and Connections, Hoorn, New Amsterdam, New York and New Jersey,” South of the Mountains (New City, NY: Historical Society of Rockland County), 51:4 (October-December 2007), 3-22.