Warner's sister, Anna, reports in her biography,
Susan Warner ("Elizabeth Wetherell") (1909), that Henry's brother Thomas, who apparently developed difficulties with officials at West Point, where he was chaplain, played a role in the family's decline by failing to act as witness for his brother--instead leaving for Europe, where he remained. Henry continued to lose money in litigation, and by 1846 the family had lost their New York properties and moved permanently to their summer house at Constitution Island, opposite West Point, the place the family called home for the remainder of their lives.
Henry Warner continued to support the family, but the sisters began writing out of financial necessity in the mid 1840s, when they were most destitute. Susan began her first novel, The Wide, Wide World, in the winter of 1847. Anna recounts the origin of the novel in her biography: "Aunt Fanny spoke. 'Sue, I believe if you would try, you could write a story.' Whether she added 'that would sell' I am not sure; but of course that was what she meant." The novel was completed in 1849, and Henry Warner took charge of finding a publisher.
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