Marietta Holley (pen names, Jemyma, later, Josiah Allen's Wife;[1] July 16, 1836 – March 1, 1926), was an American humorist who used satire to comment on U.S. society and politics.

Holley enjoyed a prolific writing career and was a bestselling author in the late 19th century, though she was largely forgotten by the time of her death.

Along with Frances Miriam Whitcher and Ann S. Stephens, Holley is regarded as one of America's most significant early female humorists.

The family lived on a small farm in Jefferson County, New York,[5] on the road leading from Adams to Pierrepont Manor.

[2] She received the rudiments of an English education at a neighboring school, and later, with the exception of teachers in music and French, she pursued her studies at home.

Holley's follow-up prose work, Sweet Cicely, (New York, 1885) was wrought out through her horror of intemperance and her desire to see the young of her country saved from the evils of strong drink.

[2] Poems (New York, 1887), revealed strength and tenderness, but failed to suit the popular taste because they were wanting in the grotesque humor and pathetic homeliness of style which characterized her prose works.

Holley herself spent most of her life close to her family's farm; aside from Saratoga and Coney Island, she never actually visited the places to which she sent her fictional protagonists; she instead depended on maps, guidebooks, and descriptions for the necessary details.

[6] Many contemporary writers and suffragists held her in high regard; her famous friends included Susan B. Anthony, Twain, and Clara Barton.

Like Charles Dickens, she brought to her aid the very people whose sufferings she aimed to relieve, and whose evil deeds she hoped to check.

[8] Quaint, grotesque humor and pathetic homeliness of speech were the weapons she used to make known the wrongs of her sex and the evils of the times.