Mormon fiction is generally fiction by or about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are also referred to as Latter-day Saints or Mormons. Its history is commonly divided into four sections as first organized by Eugene England: foundations, home literature, the "lost" generation, and faithful realism. During the first fifty years of the church's existence, 1830–1880, fiction was not popular, though Parley P. Pratt wrote a fictional Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil. With the emergence of the novel and short stories as popular reading material, Orson F. Whitney called on fellow members to write inspirational stories. During this "home literature" movement, church-published magazines published many didactic stories and Nephi Anderson wrote the novel Added Upon. The generation of writers after the home literature movement produced fiction that was recognized nationally but was seen as rebelling against home literature's outward moralization. Vardis Fisher's Children of God and Maurine Whipple's The Giant Joshua were prominent novels from this time period. In the 1970s and 1980s, authors started writing realistic fiction as faithful members of the LDS Church. Acclaimed examples include Levi S. Peterson's The Backslider and Linda Sillitoe's Sideways to the Sun. Home literature experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s when church-owned Deseret Book started to publish more fiction, including Gerald Lund's historical fiction series The Work and the Glory and Jack Weyland's novels.
Juanita Pulsipher Brooks was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history. Her most notable contribution was her book related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to which her grandfather Dudley Leavitt was sometimes linked, and which caused tension between her and the church authorities. She also made significant archival contributions in the form of collected pioneer diaries documenting early Mormon history in the Dixie, Utah area. Brooks remained a faithful believer throughout her life.
Lavina Fielding Anderson was a Latter-day Saint scholar, writer, editor, and feminist. Anderson held a PhD in English from the University of Washington.
Signature Books is an American press specializing in subjects related to Utah, Mormonism, and Western Americana. The company was founded in 1980 by George D. Smith and Scott Kenney and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is majority owned by the Smith-Pettit Foundation.
Samuel Woolley Taylor was an American novelist, scriptwriter, and historian.
New Mormon history refers to a style of reporting the history of Mormonism by both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars which departs from earlier more polemical or faith-based styles of history. Rather than presenting material selectively to either prove or disprove Mormonism, the focus of new Mormon history is to present history in a more humanistic and dispassionate way, and to situate Mormon history in a fuller historical context. Because it is a break from past historical narratives, new Mormon history tends to be revisionist. In many cases, the new Mormon history follows the perspectives and techniques of new history, including cultural history. The Mormon historian Richard Bushman described it as "a quest for identity rather than a quest for authority." New Mormon historians include a wide range of both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, the most prominent of which include Bushman, Jan Shipps, D. Michael Quinn, Terryl Givens, Leonard J. Arrington, Richard P. Howard, Fawn Brodie, and Juanita Brooks.
Lowell Dale Morgan, generally cited as Dale Morgan or Dale L. Morgan, was an American historian, accomplished researcher, biographer, editor, and critic. He specialized in material on Utah history, Mormon history, the American fur trade, and overland trails. His work is known both for its comprehensive research and accuracy and for the fluid imagery of his prose.
Although the Mountain Meadows massacre was covered to some extent in the media during the 1850s, its first period of intense nationwide publicity began around 1872. This was after investigators obtained the confession of Philip Klingensmith, a Mormon bishop at the time of the massacre and a private in the Utah militia. National newspapers also covered the John D. Lee trials closely from 1874 to 1876, and his execution in 1877 was widely publicized. The first detailed work using modern historical methods was published in 1950, and the massacre has been the subject of several historical works since that time.
In Mormonism, a penalty is a specified punishment for breaking an oath of secrecy after receiving the Nauvoo endowment ceremony. Adherents promised they would submit to execution in specific ways should they reveal certain contents of the ceremony. In the ceremony participants each symbolically enacted three of the methods of their execution: throat slitting, heart removal, and disembowelment. These penalties were first instituted by Joseph Smith in 1842, and further developed by Brigham Young after Smith's death. The penalties were similar to oaths made as part of a particular rite of Freemasonry practiced in western New York at the time the endowment was developed. During the 20th century, the largest Mormon denomination, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gradually softened the graphic nature of their penalties, and in 1990, removed them altogether from its version of the ceremony. Other Mormon denominations continue to have the penalties as part of their temple oaths.
Douglas H. Thayer was a prominent author in the "faithful realism" movement of Mormon fiction. He has been called the "Mormon Hemingway" for his straightforward style and powerful prose. Eugene England called him the "father of contemporary Mormon fiction."
The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950) by Juanita Brooks was the first definitive study of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
The Association for Mormon Letters (AML) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 to "foster scholarly and creative work in Mormon letters and to promote fellowship among scholars and writers of Mormon literature." Other stated purposes have included promoting the "production and study of Mormon literature" and the encouragement of quality writing "by, for, and about Mormons." The broadness of this definition of LDS literature has led the AML to focus on a wide variety of work that has sometimes been neglected in the Mormon community. It publishes criticism on such writing, hosts an annual conference, and offers awards to works of fiction, poetry, essay, criticism, drama, film, and other genres. It published the literary journal Irreantum from 1999 to 2013 and currently publishes an online-only version of the journal, which began in 2018. The AML's blog, Dawning of a Brighter Day, launched in 2009. As of 2012, the association also promotes LDS literature through the use of social media. The AML has been described as an "influential proponent of Mormon literary fiction."
The AML Awards are given annually by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) to the best work "by, for, and about Mormons." They are juried awards, chosen by a panel of judges. Citations for many of the awards can be found on the AML website.
Linda Buhler Sillitoe was an American journalist, poet and historian. She is best known for her journalistic coverage about Mark Hofmann and the "Mormon forgery murders." Her subsequent book Salamander, coauthored with Allen Roberts, examined Hofmann's creation of an industry for forged documents, the 1985 bombing murders of two people, and the police investigation, arrest and conviction. The murder investigation eventually revealed Hofmann's documents, initially seen as undermining the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were forgeries. Sillitoe’s published works also included fiction and poetry.
Sterling Moss McMurrin was a liberal Mormon theologian and Philosophy professor at the University of Utah. He served as United States Commissioner of Education in the administration of President John F. Kennedy.
Mormon studies is the interdisciplinary academic study of the beliefs, practices, history and culture of individuals and denominations belonging to the Latter Day Saint movement, a religious movement associated with the Book of Mormon, though not all churches and members of the Latter Day Saint movement identify with the terms Mormon or Mormonism. Denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by far the largest, as well as the Community of Christ (CoC) and other smaller groups, include some categorized under the umbrella term Mormon fundamentalism.
Maurine Whipple was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her novel The Giant Joshua (1941). The book is lauded as one of the most important Mormon novels, vividly depicting pioneer and polygamous life in the 19th century.
This is a bibliography of works on the Latter Day Saint movement.
Phyllis Barber is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, often set in the Western United States. She was raised in Boulder City, Nevada and Las Vegas as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She studied piano at Brigham Young University and moved to Palo Alto, California where her husband studied law at Stanford. There Barber finished her degree in piano at San Jose State College in 1967, and taught and performed piano in California. She studied creative writing at the University of Utah and received an MFA in writing from Vermont College in 1984. She started her writing career by publishing short stories in journals and magazines in the 1980s.
Nothing Very Important and Other Stories is a collection of interconnected short stories written by Béla Petsco and self-published in 1979 with illustrations by his friend Kathryn Clark-Spencer. The stories are about missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints working in Southern California. Signature Books reprinted the book in 1984 under their Orion imprint. Petsco wrote the stories for his master's thesis at Brigham Young University (BYU). The book won the 1979 Association for Mormon Letters award for short fiction. The stories were adapted for theater and performed in 1983, but without BYU's endorsement.
