Josephine Spencer
Josephine Spencer (April 30, 1861 - October 28, 1928) was a writer and journalist from the United States. Her creative writing was inspired by her membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Biography. Josephine Spencer was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861, the daughter of Daniel Spencer and Emily Shafter Thompson. She published over 100 poems and over 75 short stories, primarily in regional and religious publications of Utah though also in national publications such as "The Magazine of Poetry and Literary Review". Beginning in the 1890s, "Spencer was hired as the "Deseret  News" society and literary editor, a job she held for decades." She was a founding member of the Utah Women's Press Club in late 1891. In May 1893, she traveled on assignment to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition and reported through the "Deseret News" of Utah's representation at the exhibits. "It is a great deal for Utah to be represented even in a small way at the Exposition, for no such opportunity has ever been or ever will be again offered for advertising the resources of our Territory and the talents and industry of her people , she wrote for the Juvenile Instructor" that November. Spencer never married. She was active in civic organizations such as Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. She moved to California at the end of her life, probably working for the "Pasadena Star". The bulk of Spencer's work is typical of the Home Literature style of LDS literature, characterized by didacticism and stringent morality. At the end of her life, however, she published "Little Mother", a reworking of her 1910 story "To Keep" and "with one stunning rewrite, Spencer broke out of Home Literature's safety and wrestled with sensitive questions about  mothering, family relationships, gender roles, and ultimately, faith in God." She died five months after its publication. The first collection of her work, "The Senator from Utah and Other Tales of the Wasatch", was published in 1895 in Salt Lake City by George Q. Cannon & Sons. The tales in this collection, set in the Salt Lake Valley and the Oquirrh Mountains, promoted Mormon-style communal living in the wake of economic depression after the Panic of 1893. She also wrote the dedicatory poem to "Life Sketches of Orson Spencer and Others in the History of Primary Work" by Aurelia Spencer  Rogers in 1898. The second collection of her work, Josephine Spencer: Her Collected Works, Volume 1, 1887–1899, was published in 2020 by BCC Press.