Features:
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.


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. 

• This copy has no date, it looks to be 1880's-1900. . It has a decorated red cloth cover in very good condition, a small piece cut from the bottom of the spine, as pictured, with 448 pages the contents are good, a lovely colour engraving picture in the middle is loose, the book is tightly bound with only minimal age/shelf wear. It measures a small 12.5 x 8cms and is 8cms thick and contains 2 x interesting slips of paper, a tattersals Metropolitan lottery ticket for 1926 and a receipt for a copy of 'Great Controversy' dated 1910.