Singmaster, Elsie b.August 29, 1879; Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania d. September 30, 1958; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Writer whose specialty was fiction set in the Pennsylvania German region. Whether dealing with her contemporaries or with historical figures, Singmaster employed the techniques of “sympathetic realism” to de­velop characters who were, despite ethnic differences, all very human.

Elsie Singmaster descended from a long line of Lutheran pastors. Her father, a dis­tinguished Lutheran theologian, was to be­come president of Gettysburg Seminary. Her mother came from English Quaker stock. Singmaster completed her formal ed­ucation at Cornell and Radcliffe. She was very conscious of possessing a dual heritage: two languages (English and Pennsylvania German), two literatures—indeed, two cul­tures. She savored the religious life, church music, and attachment to the soil that she found in her region. But she was never a re­gional writer in the strict sense, and cer­tainly not a regional apologist. Perhaps her consciousness of the fragmentation of the Pennsylvania Germans due to religion and to the strength of sectarianism among

them, and certainly her steadfast commit­ment to enlightenment and secularism, led her to portray religious fanaticism and sec­tarianism unfavorably, although with some sympathy for her characters displaying these traits and their predicaments. Despite her sensitivity to spirituality, she was not given to taking the fine points of theology seriously. Her feminism is apparent in much of her writing. Ellen Levis, the cen­tral figure in Singmaster’s novel of the same name (1921), as well as Naomi and Miss Gleason in Bennett Malin (1922), differ greatly in religion, social standing, and in­tellect, but each is a strong woman whose activities and development are restricted by a patriarchal society.

In the early twentieth century Singmaster became a regular contributor to prominent periodicals including Scribner’s, Century, and Atlantic Monthly. Because she published hundreds of short stories and some of her novels were first serialized, it is not surprising that in her time she was best known as the author of short works. More disconcerting is the frequent identification of Singmaster as a children’s author. It is true that many of her books, especially nonfiction such as Martin Luther (1917) and historical fiction such as Stories of Pennsylvania, 1616—1860 (1940), are di­rected to young people, but she did not “write down” to this audience, and most of her work is clearly intended for adults. At her best, as in her collection of tales involv­ing Mennonites, Bred in the Bone (1925), her novel of a simple Pennsylvania German household at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, The Magic Mirror (1934), and in some of her attempts to write the history of Pennsylvania German settlements in the eighteenth century, she entertains and enlightens while avoiding

Elsie Singmaster, 1920. At the height of her popularity from 1910 to 1940, she provided interpretations of Pennsylvania German life to a broad American audience. (Macungie Historical Society, Singmaster Family Collection)

the stereotypes that often distort the public image of the Pennsylvania “Dutchman.” Despite her literary craftsmanship and the popularity of her work during the early decades of the twentieth century she is in 2005, unfortunately, scarcely known even among literary scholars.

Walter Struve

See also Novel, German American;

Pennsylvania

References and Further Reading

Graeff, Arthur D., et al. The Pennsylvania Germans. Ed. Ralph Wood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1942.

Kohler, Dayton. “Elsie Singmaster.” Bookman 72 (1931): 621-626.

Wagenknecht, Edward. Cavalcade of the American Novel: From the Birth of the Nation to the Middle of the Twentieth Century. New York: Holt, 1958.