“How should a seven year old child react when forced to be separated from a mother who meant everything to her? How should she react when she learns that the aunt with whom she was sent to live doesn’t really care about her? Will she be able to make real friendships with people outside her family? Would she be able to take her belief in God as a comfort? If you want to find answers to all these questions, read the enjoyable novel “The Wide, Wide World”. There, you will see how the amazing Ellen Montgomery reacts to all those things, and many, many more”.

First Page:

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 quiet self respect, not inconsistent with modesty and due humility... Continue reading book >>