Early in 1919 Zona Gale began sending her new manuscript on its rounds to magazine editors, her cover-letter typically restrained: "Dear Sir:—I am submitting with this a novelette, 'Miss Lulu Bett,' with the hope that it may just possibly be acceptable to you." Six editors rejected it straightaway, even though it could have been run as a magazine serial. Finally Rutger Jewett of D. Apple-ton Company agreed to publish it as a book.

For the story Zona Gale had taken an episode originally intended for Birth but cut out to shorten the already too lengthy novel. Jeffrey Pitt became Bobby in Miss Lulu Betti and the title character was his casual aunt in Birth changed to the leading character in the novelette. Carefully she expanded the episode, which in its completion was still "as spare," thought Carl Van Doren, "as the virgin frame" of the...