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.

[The Wide, Wide World] was written in closest reliance upon God: for thoughts, for power, and for words. Not the mere vague wish to write a book that should do service to her Master: but a vivid, constant, looking to him for guidance and help [sic]: the worker and her work both laid humbly at the Lord's feet.

—Anna Warner, Susan Warner¹

I a Book That Would Sell

Susan and Anna Warner spent...