Melbourne House

Susan Bogert Warner, pen name Elizabeth Wetherell (1819 - 1885), was an American evangelical writer of religious fiction, children's fiction and theological works. She is best remembered for The Wide, Wide World. Her other works include Queechy, The Hills of Shatemuck, Melbourne House, Daisy, Walks from Eden, House of Israel, What She Could, Opportunities and House in Town. Warner and her sister, Anna, wrote a series of semi-religious novels which had extraordinary sale, including Say and Seal, Christmas Stocking, Books of Blessing, 8 vols., The Law and the Testimony. She wrote, under the name of Elizabeth Wetherell, thirty novels, many of which went into multiple editions. However, her first novel, The Wide, Wide World (1850), was the most popular. It was translated into several other languages, including French, German and Dutch. Other than Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was perhaps the most widely circulated story of American authorship. Other works include Queechy (1852), The Law and the Testimony, (1853), The Hills of the Shatemuc, (1856), The Old Helmet (1863) and Melbourne House (1864). In the nineteenth century, critics admired the depictions of rural American life in her early novels. American reviewers also praised Warner's Christian and moral teachings, while London reviewers tended not to favor her didacticism. In the later twentieth century, feminist critics rediscovered The Wide, Wide World, discussing it as a quintessential domestic novel and focusing on analyzing its portrayal of gender dynamics.