Anna Farquhar (after marriage, Anna Bergengren; pen name, Margaret Allston; December 23, 1865 – 1945) was an American author and editor. A Singer's Heart (1897) and The Devil's Plough (1901) were published under her maiden name, "Anna Farquhar", but she used a pseudonym, "Margaret Allston", thereafter.
Farquhar was born in 1865, near Brookville, Indiana. Her father, John Hanson Farquhar, was a lawyer and congressman. Initially planning to be a professional singer, her health failed while studying in Boston and she was eventually obliged to give up her plans.
Farquhar served as assistant editor of National Magazine. She wrote for the Boston Transcript, Detroit Free Press, and Springfield Republican during her musical career. While studying vocal music in London and Paris, she was employed as a foreign correspondent to the Boston Transcript. She also did much other magazine work.
Her story The Singer's Heart expressed her professional ambitions. The Professor's Daughter was published in the Saturday Evening Post and was very popular. Under the pen name of "Margaret Allston", Her Boston Experiences initially appeared in a magazine, and in book form in 1899. The Devil's Plough was a story of the early French missionaries of North America. During her life in Washington, D.C., she obtained the material for her book Her Washington Experiences, her first real success as a writer. She was also the author of Letters of a Cabinet Member's Wife, 1897.
Early life and education
Anna Farquhar was born on 23 December 1865, at Brookville, Indiana. Her father, John Hanson Farquhar, was a lawyer and congressman. Her mother was Frances Mary Farquhar. Of Scotch-English ancestry, Anna's ancestors came to the United States in the time of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore's settling in Maryland, near Baltimore. After a short residence in Cincinnati, Ohio, her family moved to Indianapolis, where Congressman Farquhar became president of one of the foremost city banks.
In Indianapolis, Anna attended private schools. While still quite young, she showed a distinct inclination toward languages and history, and an overwhelming love for music. Her particular aversion was the study of mathematics. At sixteen, she attended a boarding-school in Maryland, but soon returned to a society life, "educating her heels far better than her head will ever be educated."
Farquhar left Indianapolis for Boston at the age of 21 to study for the professional musical stage. She cultivated her voice for grand opera, sang in church, and taught singing at the same time. In order to raise the money for her musical education, the family property was mortgaged. The death of her father several years before had made this a possibility.
In Boston, Farquhar struggled to cultivate her voice but received recognition of her growing musical powers by appointment to a position in a church choir. However the weather in New England began to undermine her health, which was never very robust, and her throat was so affected that further voice lessons were useless.
Career
Farquhar moved to Maryland, then New York City and Washington D.C. in search of conditions that would improve her health enough for her to have a singing career. It was then that she first applied herself to literary work, for, not being able to sing, she found in this an outlet for artistic expression. The next years were a period of sickness and of renewed literary endeavor.
As a singing teacher, she was still able to keep in touch with music, and, under the skilful treatment of a New York physician, her lost voice gradually returned, although still unstable. A visit to England shortly after a brief residence in Boston, where she had held an editorship on a periodical devoted to music, decided her future career. The years of training to be a musician had unfortunately been wasted as far as permanent results were concerned, for, said London's foremost teacher of music, "Your physique and temperament can never stand the strain of the musical life." This was indeed a sad blow, but the many disappointments which had come in earlier years had perhaps prepared her for the acknowledgment of failure in physical strength to stand the wear and tear of an exacting and strenuous profession.
A Singer's Heart, published in Boston, was her first literary endeavor, and to some extent expressed the professional ambitions which she herself had experienced in her musical career. Although it was not a "popular" production, its notices were flattering, and when a certain Philadelphia paper bought twelve copies for its editorial staff, her spirits were naturally raised and stimulated to renew her literary work.