Mildred Keith: Book 1
Martha Finley
Sixteen-year-old Mildred Keith moves with her father, mother, and seven brothers and sisters from their home in Landsdale, Ohio, to the small riverside town of Pleasant Plains, Indiana. Mildred's maiden great-aunt, Wealthy Stanhope, travels with them.
A life very different from the one they had known awaits them on this new frontier. It is a plain and simple life with hard work, but visits from Indians keep things lively.
Horace Dinsmore pays a visit to his cousin, Mildred's mother, before departing on a long trip to Europe. Shortly after he leaves, Mildred must seek help from neighbors and friends to care for her entire family, all of whom have been stricken with disease.
Penned in the late nineteenth century, the Mildred Books were written by Martha Finley to fill in the story of her first character series, Elsie Dinsmore. Finley wrote seven Mildred books to supplement the twenty-eight Elsie books. She died in 1909 and was buried in a small cemetery around the corner from her house, which still stands in Elkton, Maryland.
| MISS MARTHA FINLEY was born on April 26, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio to an affluent and patriotic family. Her first decade was spent living in different towns of Ohio and Indiana with her parents, Dr. James Brown Finley and Maria Theresa Brown, while educated at home and in private schools in varying cities.
In 1853, after the death of her parents, Miss Finley moved to New York, and later to Philadelphia. She became a private educator and taught students in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, and until 1874, she lived between both New York and Philadelphia. When her school was destroyed during the war, she moved to Bedford, Pennsylvania, living with an aunt and sister. While in Philadelphia in 1876, at the Centennial Exposition, she visited relatives in Elkton, Maryland. With the onset of poor health and the advice of her physician residing there, she decided to make Elkton her home. Miss Finley, at age 26, began her literary career writing a newspaper article and Sunday School Stories for a Presbyterian publication. After becoming dependant upon others because of poor health, she prayed for a means to support herself. After three years of writing, her first book, Elsie Dinsmore, was published. Young readers demanded more, causing Miss Finley to comply, until there were 28 books in the series. An invalid for many years, Miss Finley wrote many of her books while prostrated with illness. A simple, pleasant woman with delicate features, never married and childless, Miss Finley was one of the most beloved authors, by children, of all time, with over 25 million readers in both America and England. She lived and wrote quietly until her death in Elkton, Maryland in 1909.--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition. |
$6.95, Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-58182-227-8 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-58182-227-4 (Paperback)
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