Browse Items (3304 total)

This is the first page of text in the 1853 T. Nelson & Sons "Nelson's Library for Travellers and the Fireside" Reprint. The page begins with the book's title at approximately 1/6 way down the page. After the title is a simple zierrat with the Chapter underneath. Underneath the chapter title is an excerpt from Longfellow's "It is not always May".

The spreadsheet lists 103 reviews of The Wide, Wide World, published in various American periodicals from 1850-1859, and encodes the reviews by type and stance.

Research Method

Using Proquest’s American Periodicals database, I searched the phrase “wide wide world,” with the additional limiting dates of 1850-1859. I went through the 368 results, year by year, and collected reviews of Warner’s novel. I did not download reviews of other novels by Susan Warner unless the reviewers mentioned The Wide, Wide World for the sake of literary comparison (e.g., better or worse than Warner’s first novel) or when they touched on the quality of her authorship in a general sense. I ignored advertisements and lists of announcements. Essentially, if there were any sorts of value judgments about The Wide, Wide World or the quality of Warner’s writing, then I included the reviews (no matter how brief). The data set is iimited by the fact that it only documents reviews found in periodicals contained within American Periodicals.

Reviewer discusses the growth of literature for "juveniles" and its generic potential; praises Warner's contributions to the field

Reviewer investigates the current state of the novel as compared with its eighteenth-century forebears; considers contemporary tendencies toward moral argumentation; expresses mixed feelings about the genre's evolution; discusses The Wide, Wide World, Queechy, and Dollars and Cents as positive examples of a new class of American novel, "having a character of their own--humane, religious, piquant, natural, national"

Reviewer of Warner's Queechy discusses the fame of its author and the literary success of The Wide, Wide World

Reviewer praises The Wide, Wide World for its verisimilitude and its heroine's religious journey; appreciates the novel's ending

Reviewer appreciates The Wide, Wide World, especially as a book for children; mistakenly exposes the novel's Scottish authorship ("appears as an American book, but it is utterly deficient in American spirit")

Reviewer admires the novel's exemplary religious lessons; recommends the book to Christian families

Reviewer acknowledges the book's good intentions; points negatively to its overt didacticism; makes fun of the author's overreliance on tears