While Esther Forbes was primarily a writer of adult historical fiction, her two attempts at writing for children. Johnny Tremain (1943) and America's Paul Revere (1948), have won universal critical acclaim and clearly established her as a respected...

Not every historical novelist can write a good biography, but the right kind of historical novelist has some of the qualities most needed in a good biographer. Esther Forbes is that kind of novelist, and her biography of Paul Revere ["Paul Revere and the World He Lived In"] takes at once a high and lasting place in American literature. Miss Forbes credits her mother, Harriette M. Forbes, with doing "most of the work on the original papers, court records, deeds, etc., newspapers, manuscr...

The historical novel, latterly, has come to depend more and more upon the old picaresque formula which had, in its origins, nothing in particular to do with history. As if plotted upon a sine wave, the story must soar to a lush bit of four-poster ecstasy every fifteen pages, and plummet in the interstices into violence and cruelty. It is therefore something of a relief to come upon a tale [such as The Running of the Tide] which does not rely upon such gaudy devices at all. Miss Forbes approaches her task an...

["O Genteel Lady!"] is the strange story of Lanice Bardeen, beautiful bluestocking of the Boston of Holmes, Emerson and the Alcotts. No one else in the book matters much, although there are many characters. But Lanice lives, and her life is shown us with honesty and rather bitter laughter. Esther Forbes is able to keep her characters in costume without letting the costumes smother the characters. The book is brilliant with color. You really see picture after picture—the ladies of fashio...