Fanny is the fictionalized autobiography of Louis Dantin, the pen name of author Eugene Seers.
Two great upheavals shape the protagonist's life—he leaves the priesthood and exiles himself to the United States, working for many years in the printing shop of the Harvard University Press. There he marries a black woman, cutting himself off doubly, according to the standards of his day—from the conservative community in which he was raised and from the race-conscious one in which he lives. Fanny deals with these exceedingly intimate, painful and bittersweet years of his life, which he devotes unremittingly to writing and criticism.
This work is interesting for several reasons. The author was romantically involved with a black woman, Fannie, for two years, until her death; he also maintained close ties with the black community in Boston. The author gives us a gripping "Scenes from Black Life in the United States," as one intended subtitle put it, and including his personal story. Fearing the scandal this subject might cause, Dantin refused to have the novel published during his lifetime.
