Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart

Fanny Chambers Gooch (1842-1913) was an American author.

Fanny Chambers Gooch was born in 1842 in Hillsboro, Mississippi, although she spent most of her life in Texas. She was the eighth of thirteen children.

Through her book Face to Face with the Mexicans (New York, 1888), she became famous. The story of the inception, growth, publication and success of this book gave an insight into the character of its author, and is at the same time an interesting illustration of the changed conditions of the modern American woman's life. Gooch moved with her family to the city of Saltillo, Mexico. She went to Mexico almost entirely ignorant of the domestic manners of that country, and set up her home among them, expecting to order her household affairs after the same comfortable fashion which made her home in Austin, Texas. The story of the disillusionment told in the opening chapters of her book is exquisitely ludicrous. After a determined effort to force the immovable Mexican customs, she found herself compelled to yield to the inevitable. She might be compelled to do without a cooking-stove and to forego the delights of attending to her own marketing and shopping, but her genial soul demanded that, if foiled in her domestic plans, she would at least refuse to be shut out from social intercourse with the people among whom she found herself. Returning after some years to her former home in Austin, her descriptions of her Mexican experiences so entertained her friends that she was asked to prepare a series of articles on the subject for a Texas newspaper. She decided to publish her work in book form. She returned to Mexico, where she spent some time in its principal cities, mingling with its people in every station. She went to New York and superintended the publication of the work. The book at once attracted the notice of the leading reviewers and became very successful.

She is also the author of The Boy Captive of the Texas Mier Expedition, The Tradition of Guadalupe and Christmas in Old Mexico and Christmas in Old Mexico. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association wrote that Christmas in Old Mexico was an "interesting and instructive booklet."

In 1911, Volume 80, Part 2 of The Publishers Weekly wrote of The Boy Captive of the Texas Mier Expedition, "The author [Gooch] is an enthusiastic and competent student of the history of Texas and Mexico. She has passed laborious years in the independent investigation of some of the most romantic and significant events in Texas history, and has gathered in her MS. dealings with the Mier expedition, much interesting and original material and has presented this material in her book. The story deals with the life of a real boy. John C. C. Hill, who at the age of thirteen lived through these experiences."

She also contributed one chapter of Mexican recipes (such as tamal de cazuela) to the book Austin's First Cookbook (1891). A total of 89 women contributed the 300 recipes, and Gooch was one of the only ones known to have worked outside her home.

Her work is also excerpted in the 2005 book Mexico Otherwise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observer.

The year following the publication of Face to Face with the Mexicans, Gooch married Dr. D. T. Iglehart, of Austin.

She died in 1913.