Susan Warner, best remembered for her popular first two novels, The Wide, Wide World (1850) and Queechy (1852), was one of the few American women to write successfully for a living during the antebellum period. Attempting both to support her family and to impart Christian values to her predominantly young, female readers by way of believable characters, Warner wrote prolifically and profitably about those experiences she knew firsthand--financial hardship, spiritual uncertainty, moral growth, enduring friendship, and the loss of a parent.

Susan Bogert Warner, born 11 July 1819 in Manhattan, was the first of the two daughters of attorney Henry Whiting Warner and Anna Marsh Bartlett Warner. Although the girls' mother died in 1828, Henry Warner's sister Fanny came to live with them, and both Susan and her sister Anna Bartlett seem to have had a comfortable and enjoyable childhood. Because of their father's investments in real estate and the family's rapid financial...