Rebecca is lively and literary rather than tearful and godly. Jean Webster’s Daddy Long-
Legs (1912) places its heroine (literary, like Rebecca) in an orphanage, whence an
unknown benefactor (later to fall in love with her) sends her to college. Eleanor Hodgson
Porter’s Pollyanna (1913) is a ray of sunshine, again afflicted with a vinegarish aunt,
who sees good everywhere and transforms the lives of those around her. Frances Boyd
Calhoun’s Miss Minerva and William Green Hill (1909) is a curious variant, with Tom
Sawyer and Pollyanna rolled into the person of one small boy, a wrecker but a charmer,
also saddled with an aunt.
The prolific Jacob Abbott (1803–1879) wrote about more normal family life. From his
accounts of country children English readers first learnt about such New England
pleasures as maple sugaring, sleigh riding, camping in the woods. His books are an
American version of Maria Edgeworth’s Harry, Lucy, Rosamond and Frank tales, and
like her he aimed to produce sensible, alert and independent children, though as this
was America he expected more in the way of work from them. However, it is not the
parents who are so influential in the moulding of character as the older children whom
he shrewdly introduces as mentors. In the Rollo series which began in 1834, Jonas the
hired boy teaches little Rollo useful skills; in the ten Franconia stories (1850–1853)
there is a Swiss boy whom the children call Beechnut, with a wonderful talent for
planning unusual games and amusements. There are also ingenious punishments, for
Abbott was a school-master, albeit a benign and enlightened one.
Rebecca Clarke (1833–1906) who wrote under the name of Sophie May, continued in
the Abbott style. Her stories have more religious content, and show children (the
younger of whom talk in winsome baby fashion) being gently and rationally guided into
good behaviour. Female influence here is dominant; there are mothers, aunts, sisters,
grandmothers, but fathers rarely appear. Little Prudy (1863) was followed by a steady
stream of stories about Prudy (who grows up and has children of her own), Dotty Dimple
and Flaxie Frizzle.
Far less didactic and never sentimental, but also with something of the Abbott flavour,
is Doings of the Bodley Family in Town and Country (1876) by Horace Scudder (1838–
1902). This gentle saga of Nathan, Philippa and Lucy Bodley, their father and mother,
the hired man, and various household animals including Mr Bottom the horse,
contained much from Scudder’s own childhood. Later Bodley books became travelogues
and have fewer domestic events. Lucretia Hale’s The Peterkin Papers, first published in
book form in 1880, brought a new element of farce into the family story. The Peterkin
family muddle everything, and are unable to bring common sense to the smallest
domestic problem.
The febrile atmosphere created by Warner and Finley for girls’ reading gave way to the
straightforward good sense of Louisa Alcott (1832–1888). ‘“I do think that families are
the most beautiful things in all the world”’, she makes Jo exclaim in Good Wives, and
the quartet of books about the March family, beginning with Little Women (1868), is the
supreme celebration of family affection. ‘“It seems as if I should be homesick for you
even in heaven”’, says the dying Beth. It would be impossible to guess from Little Women
that Alcott’s own childhood had been over-shadowed by the irresponsibility of her
father, who at one stage had contemplated abandoning his family. Mr March is revered,
even though he is superfluous to the story and is rarely seen even when he returns from
TYPES AND GENRES 341