Willis published her first article, "The Governess", in November 1851 in the new Boston newspaper "Olive Branch", followed by some short satirical pieces there and in "True Flag"; soon after she regularly began using the pen name "Fanny Fern" for all her articles. In 1852, on her own with two daughters to support, she began writing in earnest. She sent samples of her work under her own name to her brother Nathaniel, by then a magazine owner, but he refused them and said her writing was not marketable outside Boston. He was proved wrong, as newspapers and periodicals in New York and elsewhere began printing Fanny Fern's "witty and irreverent columns".