Frances Aretta Carpenter (April 30, 1890 – November 2, 1972) was an American folklorist, author, and photographer. She traveled to, and published collections of folk stories from, nations on five continents.
Frances Aretta Carpenter was born in Washington, D.C. in 1890. Her mother was Joanna Condict. Her father was noted traveller and travel-writer Frank G. Carpenter, and her brother John Carpenter. Unusually for the times, her father took her traveling with him internationally as his secretary and photographic assistant from her early teenage years, with a break to complete her college education starting in 1908.
In 1912 she graduated from Smith College, and returned to work as her father's assistant.[1]
From an early age, she photographed ethnographically diverse subjects for her father's books.[2] The pair traveled extensively on four continents, with Frances remaining in active partnership with Frank Carpenter until his death in 1924.[3]
In 1930, Carpenter published Tales of a Basque Grandmother, her first collection of folktales. This would also be the first of her popular Grandmother series, where she used the device of a central organizing narrator to convey details of national culture as well as its folk legends. Her breakthrough as a popular writer would come three years later with the publication of Tales of a Russian Grandmother, (1933) "genuine" stories, translated from original Russian sources,[4] and printed with the now classic illustrations by Ivan Bilibin.
In the early 1960s, Carpenter traveled to Canada and the Mediterranean. In 1964 she visited Africa and traveled throughout the continent by car. In 1966 she was in Japan and Korea. Her last major folklore collection, People from the Sky; Ainu Tales from Northern Japan, which detailed the vanishing culture of the repressed Ainu people of North Japan, was published in 1972.[3]
In addition to her own work, her projects included the ongoing work of organizing her father's corpus, arranging for a mass donation of the family papers and photographs to the Library of Congress[5] and publishing excerpts from her father's written work. Carp's Washington, a selection of her father's "early" Washington columns (written in the 1880s) was published in 1960, and became a best seller.[6]
On April 6, 1920, Carpenter married William Chapin Huntington, a career diplomat with whom she continued to travel all over the world.[3] He worked at the Embassy of the United States, Paris and the United States Foreign Service from 1920 until 1961.[1][3] The couple had two children: Joanna Huntington Noel and Edith Chapin Huntington Williams.[6] Although, as was traditional at the time of her marriage, Ms. Carpenter took her husband's surname, she continued to publish under her birthname.
Carpenter is interred at Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C.[7] The Frances Carpenter Papers are held in the collection of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.[1] The Library of Congress has a collection of approximately 7,000 negatives and 16,800 photographs taken by the Carpenters which document the ethnographic work begun by her father and continued through Carpenter's own career.[2]
^ abcdePark, Sarah. "Author Biography". University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Archived from the original on August 3, 2013. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
^Wisconsin Library Bulletin. Division of Library Services, Department of Public Instruction. October 1933. p. 217.
