Monday, July 4, 2011

Family Pride by Mary J. Holmes c.1904 Women's Civil War Novel

Click to Enlarge
Title: Family Pride

Author: Mary J. Holmes

Storyline: The widowed Mrs. Lucy Lennox returns to her Revolutionary war era home in the bay state town of rural Silverton where she was raised by her steady clergyman uncle, Deacon Ephram Barlow, her diligent aunt Hannah, and maiden-lady cousin, Miss Betsy. Lucy brings with her two daughters, Katy and Helen. Bright young thing Katy has caught the eye of her staid cousin Dr. Morris Grant. Grant wrote to Katy while at medical school in Paris, and upon his return to Silverton, paid for Katy's finishing school at Canandaigua Seminary. But wait, home from the seminary, Katy is now off on a grand tour of Boston and Montreal with Mrs. Woodhull and party! Will Morris be able to make his move and capture the heart of cousin Katy before she is lost to eastern society? Order your vintage copy of bestselling author Mary Jane Holmes' Family Pride and see if it all ends happily.

Copyright: unstated, c.1904

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap, New York

Format: Red cloth-bound hardcover with applied photo plate to front cover

Page Count: 320

Author Biography:

Holmes, Mary J. (b.1825-d.1907) Born Hawes in Massachusetts, to a large middle-class family that encouraged learning among their children, both boys and girls. At the early age of 13, she taught school and began to write. She married Daniel Holmes, a Yale graduate, and resided in Kentucky Bluegrass region before the Civil War, until she finally settled in Brockport, NY, where her husband went to study law. She used her experiences down south as the subject of a number of her novels. Although her work was not given serious critical attention from the literary establishment in her time (an old boys club), she sold millions of copies, and was second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe as a best-selling female author. Her books have recently been re-evaluated for their direct treatment of race, class, gender and slavery.

Works include: Tempest and Sunshine (1854); The English Orphans (1855); The Homestead on the Hillside, and other Tales (1855); Lena Rivers (1856); Meadow Brook (1857); Dora Deane, or the East India Uncle, and Maggie Miller, or Hagar's Secret (1858); Cousin Maude and Rosamond (1860); Marian Grey (1863); Hugh Worthington (1863); Darkness and Daylight (1864); The Cameron Pride, or Purified by Suffering, or Family Pride (1867); The Christmas Font, a story for young folks (1868); Rose Mather, a Tale of the War (1868); Ethelyn's Mistake (1869); Millbank (1871); Edna Browning (1872); West Lawn, and the Rector of St. Mark's (1874); Mildred (1877); Daisy Thornton (1878); Forest House (1879); Chateau d'Or (1880); Red Bird (1880); Madeline (1881); Queenie Hatherton (1883); Christmas Stories (1884); Bessie's Fortune (1885); Gretchen (1887)