SOURCE: Barry, Anne. “Helen Hooven Santmyer: ‘I Awoke One Morning and Found Myself Famous’ (Lord Byron).” Ohioana Quarterly 27 (autumn 1984): 88-9.

In the following essay, Barry describes the successful saga of “… And Ladies of the Club,” emphasizing the Ohioana Award given to Santmyer in 1983.

The first item on the New York Times News Quiz for Saturday 14 January was: “Posing for this photograph, the first anyone has been permitted to take of her, was a new experience for 88-year-old Helen Hooven Santmyer, but her other novel experience was even more noteworthy. What was it?”

Readers of Ohioana Quarterly know it concerned her second Ohioana-Award book, “… And Ladies of the Club.” Readers have also seen her photograph, taken with her permission, in several issues of the Quarterly. But Miss Santmyer was “discovered” by the national press when it was announced that her 1,334-page novel about life in small-town Ohio was a...