Flavia Camp was raised in Black Earth, Wisconsin by her mother and step-father, the Congregational pastor Asa A. Allen, with a combined total of fifteen siblings, half-siblings, and step-siblings.[2] She taught in a local school in her late teens,[3] and went to the University of Wisconsin in 1863, the first year it admitted women.[2]
On June 24, 1873 she married James Hulme Canfield[1] with whom she had a son and in 1879 a daughter Dorothy.[4][5] Although she didn't speak any foreign languages, she made many trips to Europe with her daughter,[6] for example studying art for a year in Paris.[7]
Canfield became interested in the nascent Women's Club Movement, and accordingly while her husband was president of Ohio State University, she began a campaign to organize and federate clubs in the Columbus region.[8] In all she founded 26 such clubs and the Columbus Federation of Women's Clubs.[1] She was the first president (1895–97) of the Ohio State University Women's Club,[9] and was president of the Ohio Federation of Women's Clubs from 1898–1900.[1]
Canfield continued her interest in the arts as president of The Columbus Art Association, in which role she "broadened the policy of the association and enlarged the membership".[8]
Her published novels include The Kidnapped Campers: A Story of Out-of-Doors (1908), The Refugee Family: A Story for Girls (1919), The Big Tent (1921), and Around the World at Eighty (1925).[4]
Being made the subject of satire in "Flavia and Her Artists", a short story by her daughter Dorothy's friend Willa Cather, was probably the cause for the 10-year rift between Dorothy and Cather.[10]
^Ehrhardt, Julia (2004), "Tourists accommodated, with reservations", Writers of Conviction : The Personal Politics of Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press
^ abDenney, Jane (1920). "Club History". The University Women's Club of the Ohio State University. Archived from the original on 2013-04-16. Retrieved 2012-12-05.
^"Past Presidents". The University Women's Club of the Ohio State University. Archived from the original on 2013-04-16. Retrieved 2012-12-05.
^Rosowski, Susan J. (1985). "Prototypes for Willa Cather's "Flavia and Her Artists": the Canfield Connection". American Notes & Queries. 23: 143–145.
