SOURCE: Foster, Edward Halsey. “The Perils of Apostasy.” In Susan and Anna Warner, pp. 34-53. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.
In the following excerpt, Foster surveys the content and reception of The Wide, Wide World, considering the book “one of the first, and certainly the most famous domestic novel” in America. The critic continues by probing the reasons for its popularity in the nineteenth century as well as the principal sources of contemporary interest in the work.
