Harriet Beecher Stowe hoped only that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” would realize enough money to let her buy the material for a silk dress. Fritz had mined in the course of her research: Paul Revere, on setting out for a certain horseback ride on the 18th of April in ’75, discovered he had forgotten his spurs and dispatched his dog to fetch them.
Glimmering throughout the narratives were the curious facts that Mrs. “When Benedict Arnold was a teenager, some people in his hometown of Norwich, Conn., predicted that he’d grow up to be a success. “Traitor: The Case of Benedict Arnold” (1981), for instance, opens this way: Turning the title page, readers were pulled immediately into the story. There was “Will You Sign Here, John Hancock?” (1976) “Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George?” (1977) and “Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution” (1987). There was “And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?” (1973) “Why Don’t You Get a Horse, Sam Adams?” (1974) and “Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May?” (1975). Fritz’s were warts-and-all portraits of the often flawed men and women who left their impress on the world - and the resulting books were deemed far more humanizing as a result. What was more, where children’s biographies of an earlier age inclined toward unalloyed veneration, Mrs. Fritz would put no dialogue into her subjects’ mouths unless it was attested in original sources like letters and diaries.) Hallmarks of her work, critics agreed, included her fleet, engaging prose and prodigious archival research. Fritz was known in particular for her biographies of many of the signal figures of 18th- and 19th-century American history. The author of more than four dozen books, Mrs. Her son, David Fritz, confirmed the death. Jean Fritz, an award-winning writer whose work helped transform historical biographies for children from leaden recitals of battles and dates into warm, human narratives full of quirks and crotchets and satisfyingly strange facts, died on Sunday at her home in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.
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