Stoddard’s novel traces the education and development of a young female in American middle-class society. The protagonist, Cassandra Morgeson, is educated by a series of journeys she makes throughout her youth and early adulthood. Each new setting represents a different stage in her intellectual development.Cassandra is born in Surrey, a small New England town. Surrey is quiet and isolated, granting a young woman little intellectual stimulation. Cassandra escapes the boredom of domestic life through stories of adventure and exploration. Surrey instills in Cassandra a restlessness that drives her quest for knowledge and experience.(Introduction by Wikipedia)

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, née Barstow was a United States poet and novelist. She is most widely known today as the author of The Morgesons (1862), her first of three novels. Her other two novels are Two Men (1865) and Temple House (1867). Stoddard was also a prolific writer of short stories, children's tales, poems, essays, travel writing, and journalism pieces.

These outstanding poems by the renowned author Elizabeth Stoddard speak of the poet's hunger for the freedom of an idyllic future - a hunger enhanced by a contagious idealism characteristic of Stoddard's exceptional poetic dexterity. These are poems that elevate the listener to levels only dreamed of by the poet herself - to visions of freedom based on the essential and universal craving of a soul burdened, indeed caught within a mundane world of the commonplace. Abundant in these works is the...