This month's Puzzler
On November 29, 1832, this woman was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She spent most of her life in Boston and nearby Concord, growing up in the company of such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, both of whom were friends of her father, a pioneering-but-penniless educator.
From an early age, she was determined to become a writer, but she went to work early to help support her family. Her first book, Flower Fables, was published in 1854, but the sales were so dismal that she earned only about $35 in royalties. Many aspiring writers might have given up, but the failure only fueled her fierce determination. Four years later, in an 1858 entry in her journal, she wrote that she was “resolved to take Fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.”
After a brief attempt at teaching, she volunteered as a nurse in the Civil War, where she contracted typhoid fever (she never fully recovered). Her letters home were eventually published as Hospital Sketches in 1863, bringing her critical attention, but not much remuneration.
Her most famous work—a true literary classic—was an 1868 novel inspired by her own life experiences (the protagonist was largely autobiographical and the rest of the characters were based on her sisters and her mother). In an 1871 sequel to the work, she had a character say:
"A holiday isn't a holiday without plenty of freedom and fun."
Who was this woman? What was the title of her novel and its sequel?
Sewell Child Development Center is our newest beneficiary
for donated books -- thanks to your generosity
Printed Page donates books to the St. Francis Center, Reading Partners, East Denver FISH, and our newest worthy organization -- the Sewell Child Development Center. It's tremendously gratifying to us to be able to put books in the hands of those who might not otherwise get them, and we thank our customers for helping us to do that.
