Susan Warner (1849-1885), The Wide Wide World (1850),
Tauchnitz edition 1854


Produced by Daniel FROMONT


_The Wide, Wide World_ as seen by _The North American Review_, January
1853
'…Miss Warner… makes her young girl passionate, though
amiable, in her temper; fond of admiration, although withheld
by innate delicacy from seeking it unduly. She places her in
circumstances of peculiar trial to her peculiar traits, and
brings her, by careful gradations, to the state of self-
governed and stable virtue which fits woman for her great
office in the world; a fitness which would be impaired by the
sacrifice of a single grace, or the loss of one sentiment of
tenderness. To build such a character on any basis other than
a religious one, would have been to fix a palace upon the
shifting sands . . . Ellen and Fleda are reared, by their
truly feminine and natural experiences, into any thing but
"strong-minded women," at least if we accept Mr. Dickens's
notion of that dreadful order. They are both of velvet
softness; of delicate, downcast beauty; of flitting but
abundant smiles, and of even too many and ready tears… They
live in the affections, as the true woman must; yet they
cultivate and prize the understanding, and feel it to be the
guardian of goodness, as all wise women should… They are
conscious of having a power and place in the world, and they
claim it without assumption or affectation, and fill it with a