The Hidden Heart by Dorothy Black 1940's Girl's Novel of Young Love

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Title: The Hidden Heart 

Author: Dorothy Black

Storyline: Will our young heroine Prudence Carlyon marry for romance or financial security? Will she follow her heart and snag gallant Ronald Mallow just home from the service and live in his enchanting English country cottage Wild Strawberry Farm, or will she marry her betrothed Sir Hector Massingberd and live in his palatial estate? Who will our dear young Prue choose in this age old dilemma of marrying for love or money?

Copyrights: 1946, 1947

Publication: 1948

Publisher: Triangle Books, New York

Format: Photo-printed hardcover

Page Count: 249

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

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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)

Four Roads to Paradise by Maud Wilder Goodwin 1904 Historical Novel

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Author: Maud Wilder Goodwin

Illustrator: Arthur I. Keller

Storyline: Considered to be Goodwin's best work, we have the story of a self-centered Episcopal priest, Stuart Walford, who travels Europe (where much of the novel is set). Complications arise when he is attracted to the bishop's niece, Anne Blythe. Anne's focus, however, is on befriending her dead husband's illegitimate child. Who will find happiness in the end?

Copyrights: 1903, 1904

Published: 1904

Publisher: The Century Company, New York

Format: Brown cloth-bound hardcover with black decoration and lettering

Page Count: 347

Author Biography:

Goodwin, Maud Wilder (b.1856-d.1935) American. Best known for writing a book about her relative, Dolly Madison, and for Four Roads to Paradise, which some have compared to the works of Edith Wharton. Her historical novels are well researched, if dull. Her contemporary novels are thought to be more vivid.

Works include: Open Sesame! Poetry and Prose for School Days (edited by Goodwin, 1889); The Colonial Cavalier (1894); The Head of a Hundred (1895); Dolly Madison (1896); White Aprons (1896); Flint (1897); Sir Christopher(1901); Four Roads to Paradise (1904); Claims and Counterclaims (1905); Veronica Playfair (1909); Dutch and English on the Hudson (1919)

The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson Romantic Mystery

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Title: The House of a Thousand Candles

Author: Meredith Nicholson

Illustrator: Howard Chandler Christy

Storyline: This melodramatic novel has it all - romance and adventure, love and valor, secret passages and tunnels, and hidden treasure. The hero must live an entire year in an isolated house if he is to inherit it from his grandfather. Should he fail, he'll lose the house to a young woman whom the will forbids him to marry. The answer to the dilemma is a secret to be discovered.

Copyright: 1905

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap, New York

Format: Blue cloth-bound hardcover with applied plate, black lettering to spine

Page Count: 382

Three Lives of Elizabeth by Shirley Seifert Pre-Civil War Romance

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Title: Three Lives of Elizabeth

Author: Shirley Seifert

Storyline: If you liked Gone With The Wind and other novels about women in the American Civil War period, you are sure to enjoy Shirley Seifert's Three Lives of Elizabeth. This technically accurate story is based on the life of Elizabeth Moss, a young Missouri widow who, through marriage, climbed up into antebellum Washington, DC and Kentucky high society. Elizabeth married once for love, once for money, and once again for position. The author leads the reader through a full gamut of action and excitement to the fulfillment of a long and extraordinary life.

Copyright: 1952

Publisher: J. B. Lippincott (Book Club Ed.)

Format: Cloth-bound hardcover

Page Count: 287

Author Biography:

Seifert, Shirley. Born 1888 in St. Peters, Missouri, west of St. Louis, author  Shirley Seifert lived and worked all her life in the region.  Like the Brontes, Shirley and her sisters, Adele Seifert and Elizabeth Seifert Gasparotti, all wrote fiction.

Shirley studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin. While completing her graduate studies, she became interested in writing fiction.  She sold her first short stories to American Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. After her success with mass marketed periodicals, in the mid-1930s, Shirley focused her work full time to writing historical novel genre fiction, a number of which were well known and well reviewed.

Besides becoming a successful author, Shirley was also instrumental in founding the St. Louis Writer's Guild in 1920.  This support group of six accomplished writers in the area is still operating today.  (Ref: Goodreads, St. Louis Writer's Guild, Danya Shaikh)

Works Include: Land of Tomorrow: A Legend of Kentucky (1937), The Wayfarer (1938), Death Stops at the Old Stone Inn (1938), River out of Eden (1940), Waters of the Wilderness (1941), Those Who Go Against the Current (1943), Captain Grant (1946), Proud Way (1948), Turquoise Trail (1950), Three Lives of Elizabeth (1952), Farewell My General (1955), Let My Name Stand Fair (1956), Destiny in Dallas (1958), Grace Church, Kirkwood, Missouri: Its Story (1959), Look to the Rose (1960), By the King's Command (1962), Key to St. Louis (1963), The Senator's Lady (1967), The Medicine Man (1971), Never No More (1976)  

Peking Picnic by Ann Bridge 1932 First Edition Women's Novel

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Title: Peking Picnic

Author: Ann Bridge

Storyline: The setting is exotic 1930's China. Laura Leroy is an interesting and complex woman. She thought she left her Oxford life behind when she moved to Peking with her husband. But wait! An attractive professor from Cambridge arrives and draws Laura in, threatening her new world. What will happen at the picnic?

Copyright: 1932

Publication: 1932 First Edition

Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company, Boston

Format: Red cloth-bound hardcover with black lettering

Page Count: 355

Author Biography:

Bridge, Ann (b.1889-d.1974)  Born in the UK as Mary Anne O'Mally. Wrote novels about courtship based on her experiences living in Beijing, China with her diplomat husband. As she developed as a writer, she was noted for bringing to her novels emotional depth and a realistic portrayal of contemporary political environment.

Works include: Peking Picnic (1932); The Ginger Griffin (1934); Illyrian Spring (1935); Enchanter's Nightshade (1937); Four-Part Setting (1938); A Place to Stand (1940); Fontier Passage (1942); Frontier Passage (1942); Singing Waters (1943); And Then You Came (1948); The House At Kilmartin (1951); The Dark Moment (1951); A Family of Two Worlds: A Portrait of Her Mother (1955); The Lighthearted Quest (1956); The Portuguese Escape (1958); The Selective Traveller in Portugal (1958); Julia Involved: Three Julia Probyn Novels (1960); The Tightening String (1962); The Dangerous Islands (1963); Emergency in the Pyrenees (1965); The Episode at Toledo (1966); Facts and Fictions: Some Literary Recollections (1968); The Malady in Madeira (1970); Moments of Knowing (1970); Permission to Resign (1971); Julia in Ireland (1973)

The Flutes of Shanghai by Louise Jordan Miln 1928 Women's Novel

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Title: The Flutes of Shanghai

Author: Louise Jordan Miln

Storyline: Romance and adventure among Europeans and Chinese in Shanghai. A contemporary reviewer from The Pacific Affairs journal (v2#2, Feb 1929) thinks Mrs. Miln did a very realistic, if somewhat unwieldy job of folding historic events in Shanghai into her romance novel set in old China of the 1920s. The reviewer also thinks that her views, favorable to the locals, won't win her any points with the people in the city's foreign colonial settlement.

Copyright: 1928

Publisher: A. L. Burt Company, New York

Format: Cloth-bound hardcover

Page Count: 356

Author Biography:

Miln, Louise Jordan  (b.1864-d.1933).  Early 20th Century American novelist. Wife of traveling Shakespearean actor George Crichton Miln. Husband had little success until he performed in productions outside the US, most notably in Australia.

Works include: Mr. & Mrs. Sen; Mr. Wu (1920); The Purple Mask (1921); It Happened in Peking (1928); By Soochow Waters (1929); In a Shantung Garden (1924); In a Yun-Nan Courtyard (1927); The Green Goddess (1922); The Flutes of Shanghai (1928); The Feast of Lanterns (1934); The Soul of China, Glimpsed in Tales of Today and Yesterday; Peng Wee's Harvest; Rice: A Novel; Ann Zu-Zan, a Chinese Love Story; Ruben and Ivy Sen; Vintage of Yon Yee; Quaint Korea; The Soul of China; It Happened in Peking

Dr. Rumsey's Patient: A Very Strange Story by L. T. Meade and Dr. Halifax

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Title:  Dr. Rumsey's Patient (A Very Strange Story)

Author:  L. T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) and Dr. Halifax
 
Storyline:  Definitely a story of its time! Old Norman English aristocracy marries West Indian creole with money (paging Mr. Rochester!), but this time the insanity gene from the swarthy Caribbean branch of the family is in the males of the country squire's line. Fast forward to the turn of the 19th century. Young beautiful ward of local village innkeepers, Miss Hetty, pines for potentially nutty aristocratic young squire, Mr Awdry, and jilts nouveau riche student vacationer, Mr. Frere, in the blink of an eye. Mr. Awdry rescues Miss Hetty from the inappropriate advances of erstwhile suitor, Mr. Frere. Quite a set-up for class tensions and romantic clashes. Miss Hetty should be careful what she wishes for! 

Copyright: 1896 

Publisher:  Hurst & Company 

Format:  Cloth-bound hardcover 

Page Count:  305

Author Biography:

Meade, L. T. (b.1854–d.1914) was the pen name of prolific Irish women's novel author Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith.  Daughter of a protestant clergyman, she moved to London and married Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879.  Author of more than 300 books, Meade's most popular best seller was A World of Girls (1886). Meade also edited the popular girls' magazine, Atalanta. Her work also appeared in magazines such as The Strand Magazine and Lady's Pictorial. Meade did some interesting work outside the romance novel genre. She collaborated with Robert Eustace on a number of mystery novels like The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings, which depicted gangsters with a female criminal mastermind as a boss, Madame Koluchy. Eustace and Meade wrote also The Sorceress of the Strand, about female criminal Madame Sara. Meade collaborated with an MD, Clifford Halifax, on Stories from the Diary of a Doctor. Although most well known for stories about girls at school, Meade in addition to mysteries, wrote "sentimental" fiction, religious stories, historical novels, adventure, romances, "sensational" stories. A feminist, Meade was a member of the  activist Pioneer Club. (Refs: Wiki, TomFolio.com)

Works Include: Ashton Morton (1866), David’s Little Lad (1877), A Knight of Today (1877), Bel Marjory: A Story of Conquest (1878), Water Lilies and Other Tales (1878), The Children’s Kingdom: The Story of a Great Endeavor (1878), Great St. Benedict’s: A Tale (1879), Laddie (1879), Dot and Her Treasures (1879), Andrew Harvey's Wife (1880), A Dweller in Tents (1880), The Floating Light of Ringfinnan, and Guardian Angels (1880), A Band of Three, Seaside Library (1882), How It All Came About (1883), The Children’s Pilgrimage (1883), Scarlet Anemone (1884), The Autocrat of the Nursery (1884), The Angel of Love (1885), A Little Silver Trumpet (1885), Beforehand (1887), Letters to Our Working-Party (1887), Deb and the Duchess: A Story for Boys and Girls (1888), The Golden Lady (1889), Frances Kane's Fortune, What Gold Cannot Buy (1890), The Heart of Gold (1890), Dickory Dock (1890), Hepsy Gipsy (1891), A Sweet Girl Graduate (1891), The Children of Wilton Chase (1891), Bashful Fifteen (1892), Jill, A Flower Girl (1892), Beyond the Blue Mountains (1893), Betty, A School Girl (1894), In an Iron Grip, 2 vols. (1894), Lettie’s Last Home (1895), Girls, New And Old (1895), Dr. Rumsey's Patient: A Very Strange Story (1896), The House of Surprises (1896), A Girl in Ten Thousand (1896), Bad Little Hannah (1897), Cave Perilous (1898), The Cleverest Woman in England (1898), All Sorts (1899), The Beresford Prize (1890), Catalina: Art Student (1897), A Bunch of Cherries: A Story of Cherry Court School (1898), The Desire of Men: An Impossibility (1899), A Brave Poor Things (1899), Daddy’s Girl (1900), The Girls of True Blue: A School Story (1901), The Blue Diamond (1901), The Cosey Corner, Or How They Kept A Farm (1901), The Girls of the Forest (1902), A Double Revenge (1902), Drift (1902), The Burden of Her Youth (1903), A Gay Charmer: A Story for Girls (1903), By Mutual Consent (1903), The Adventures of Miranda (1904), The Beauforts (1904), Castle Poverty (1904), At The Back of the World (1904), Bride of Tomorrow (1904), His Mascot (1905), A Bevy of Girls (1905), Bess of Delaney's (1905), Dumps: A Plain Girl (1905), The Colonel and the Boy (1906), A Golden Shadow (1906), The Face of Juliet (1906), The Girl and Her Fortune (1906), The Colonel’s Conquest (1907), The Chateau of Mystery (1907), A Girl from America (1907), The Curse of the Feverals (1907), The Court Harman Girls (1908), The Courtship of Sybil (1908), The Aim of Her Life (1908), Blue of the Sea (1909), Brother or Husband (1909), Alwyn’s Friends (1909), The Fountain of Beauty (1909), Belinda Treherne (1910), A Girl of Today (1910), The A. B. C. Girl (1910), Desborough’s Wife (1911), The Doctor’s Children (1911), The Girl from Spain (1911), A Bunch of Cousins and the Barn Boys (1911), Corporal Violet (1912), The Chesterton Girl Graduates: A Story for Girls (1913), Elizabeth’s Prisoner (1914), A Band of Mirth (1914), The Darling of the School (1915), The Daughter of a Soldier: A Colleen of South Ireland (1915), Better Than Riches (1917), Daughters of Today (1917), The Fairy Godmother (1917), and many more