The complete online text of The Butterfly House by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman ranks among the foremost interpreters of New England village and rural life. Though she may correctly be described as a local colorist, she is much more, for in her short stories and novels she deals perceptively with the 250-year...

The life of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman has too often been compared to that of the spinsters who populate much of her fiction. Although she lived most of her life in small New England villages and did not marry until she was forty-nine years of age, Freeman'...

A small doll-like woman, who never wished to grow old and yet came to resemble so many of her aging heroines, created in her fiction the heart of New England's life and ethos. Mary Wilkins Freeman created strong-willed characters, whose Yankee stoicism o...

First, she flinched. Then Caitlin Myers covered her face with her hands and squealed.The 2-year-old didn't know which way to turn.Butterflies with blue, orange, yellow and white wings fluttered and swooped around her."She loves them," said her mom, Chris Myers. "They're fine as long as...