Susan Warner: "The Wide, Wide World"
As I did my internet search to answer the question of the first American novel, my curiosity was aroused concerning Susan Warner's novel, "The Wide, Wide World."
Here, to my delight, is a complete version of that book WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS, on-line.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wom...wide/wide.html
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/sentimnt/wwwhp.html
"the blessed fruits of religion and discipline . . ."
Published at the end of 1850, The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner
went through fourteen editions in two years, and may ultimately have
been as popular as Uncle Tom's Cabin with 19th century American
readers. The novel's central character, Ellen Montgomery, is about the
same age as Little Eva, but her story resembles Uncle Tom's. At its
beginning she is driven by circumstance from her home and mother. In
the course of her pilgrimage through the wide world, she learns to
submit her will, and so through suffering she is made pure. She is not
so much moving upward to heaven, though, as toward the status of
refined Christian lady. Unlike Tom's, her story doesn't end with death,
but on the verge of adulthood and marriage.
http://www.famousamericans.net/susanwarner/
Under the pen-name of "Elizabeth Wetherell" Miss Warner published
her first novel, "The Wide, Wide World," when she was thirty-one years
old (New York, 1851). The publisher, George P. Putnam, was advised
by his critics to reject it, and was about to do so, when his mother
read the manuscript and persuaded him to put it into print. For
months it seemed to have fallen dead, then it suddenly began to be
called for, and ultimately a quarter of a million copies were sold. The
work was also published in Europe, where it enjoyed almost equal
popularity.
"The Wide, Wide World" was the most popular novel ever written by
an American, with the single exception of Mrs. Stowe's famous story.
"It was not," says a critic, "as a picture of life that ' Uncle Tom's Cabin'
appealed to readers. It was as a contribution of the writer to the
discussion of a burning question, and its unexampled popularity was
much more than merely literary. The success of ' The Wide, Wide
World, ' on the other hand, was purely artistic, so to speak. It owes
nothing to the subject and nothing to incidents. There is not a touch of
melodrama in its treatment, and it has as little story as if it had been
written by Henry James." Taine expressed his astonishment that in
America "a three-volume novel is devoted to the history of the moral
progress of a girl of thirteen." Miss Warner was buried, by her desire,
near the Cadets' monument in the West, Point cemetery, shown in the
illustration. Her tombstone bears the inscription: "The author of ' The
Wide, Wide World' was born 11 July, 1819, and passed gently into the
life that knows no ending, 17 March, 1885. In trust for a few of the
friends that loved her, her sister has placed this stone: "Auf
Wiedersehen."
http://www.usma.edu/PublicAffairs/constit.html
THE WARNER HOUSE
The lovely old house on Constitution Island was the home of the
Warner family from 1836 to 1915. Susan and Anna Warner were
well-known writers in the Nineteenth Century. Susan wrote The Wide,
Wide World in 1850 which became a best seller of its day. Anna is best known for writing the words to the hymn "Jesus Loves Me." The sisters taught Bible classes to West Point cadets for forty years. The oldest part of
the Warner House includes a thick stone wall existing from Revoluntionary War days. The Victorian wing of eight rooms was built by Henry Warner in 1836 when he moved his family from New York City to the island. The house is furnished with the original Warner family possessions. The Warner House is a living museum and is kept as nearly as possible as it was when Miss Anna Warner lived there until her death in 1915.
http://libarts.wsu.edu/english/Journ...Q/belasco.html
When Susan Warner was staying with her publisher, George Putnam,
readying her first novel, The Wide, Wide World, for publication, she
apparently was asked to pare down her rather long story. A significant
problem from Putnam's point of view was the novel's length, and part
of Warner's task as she was correcting proofs was to trim where she
could. Several of the sections that Warner cut comprised an early
episode about a character she refers to as a "little black girl." That
Warner initially wrote an episode that involved her heroine, Ellen
Montgomery, with an African American child and then expunged it
provides us with some new ways of thinking about Warner's project in
writing her novel. While critics and readers have generally focused on
the novel's sentimentality and the Christian ethos it portrays and
advocates, attention to the omitted sections widens our
understanding of Warner's undertaking, suggesting that she was
concerned about the condition of black people in America in 1848,
when she began to write her novel, even if ambivalently. Ellen's
encounters with the African American child imply the possibilities for
spatial and social relations when boundaries between the races
become more porous--when a little white girl and a little black girl can
meet and begin a friendship, if only for a chapter or two. The episode,
which occurs in New York City in both public and private settings,
raises not only geographic and racial but also feminist issues,
providing a subtext for the published version of the novel. Questions
about race and about the appropriation of black characters that
emerge in the expunged sections and related questions about
autonomy and freedom that persist in the published version ask us to
read the novel from a broader perspective than we have before--to
see Warner's racial politics as crucial to understanding her attitude
toward Ellen's, and women's, position in antebellum America. But
Warner's erasure of the one episode that explicitly foregrounds race
also asks us to place her among the white writers whom Toni
Morrison criticizes, those who contemplate their own condition
through the figure of the invisible African and yet leave most
dimensions of the nation's unjust race relations "'unspoken.'"
http://www.constitutionisland.org/awlife2.htm
Their father purchased the Constitution Island property in 1836.
Susan records this event in her journal for June fifth of that year:
"Uncle Thomas was down from West Point last week and staid several
days. He is delighted with the prospect of doings at Constitution Island
which Father has bought. Father contemplates keeping the southern
part of the island, and building a fine house, making a sort of little
Paradise of the grounds, and residing there eight months of the year."
At about this time Anna began to write to earn money. Her first
publication was "Robinson Crusoe's Farmyard", a natural history game
for children. Shortly after, Susan began "The Wide, Wide World",
which was published in 1851. This book was a tremendous success
and temporarily alleviated much of their financial distress. Launched
in literary careers, the two sisters continued writing throughout their
lives; having about one hundred and six publications to their credit,
eighteen of which they co-authored. Among those they wrote together
was "Say and Seal"', the book in which the Hymn "Jesus Loves Me",
written by Anna, first appeared.
The successful publication of so many books still did not eliminate
their financial difficulties because there were no copyright laws at this
time. Many of their books were pirated and the Warners received no
money for those editions. Then, too, they often sold their work
outright, sometimes in serial form, for they needed immediate cash
and could not wait for the slower publishing returns.
Somehow, although they were never completely free from debt, they
managed to hold on to their historic island with its fortifications
which, date back to the earliest days of the Revolutionary War. One
wall of the room where they did most of their writing was once a part
of the barracks erected in the autumn of 1775. Hanging over the
fireplace on this wall was an original portrait of George Washington by
Gilbert Stuart. This cherished possession was one they never parted
with, no matter how destitute they became.
How did they manage? A friend tells this story of a conversation she
once had with Miss Anna:
"0ne day when sitting with Miss Anna in the old living room she took
from one of the cases a shell so delicate that it looked like lace work
and holding it in her hand, with eyes dimmed with tears, she said,
'There was a time when I was very perplexed, bills were unpaid,
necessities must be had, and someone sent me this exquisite thing.
As I held it I realized that if God could make this beautiful home for a
little creature. He would take care of me."
