The Diamond Coterie

According to Wikipedia: Susan Bogert Warner (July 11, 1819 - March 17, 1885), was an American evangelical writer of religious fiction, children's fiction, and theological works. Born in New York City, she wrote, under the name of Elizabeth Wetherell, thirty novels, many of which went into multiple editions. However, her first novel, The Wide, Wide World (1850), was the most popular. It was translated into several other languages, including French, German, and Dutch. Other than Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was perhaps the most widely circulated story of American authorship. Other works include Queechy (1852), The Law and the Testimony, (1853), The Hills of the Shatemuc, (1856), The Old Helmet (1863), and Melbourne House (1864). In the nineteenth-century, critics admired the depictions of rural American life in her early novels. American reviewers also praised Warner's Christian and moral teachings, while London reviewers tended not to favor her didacticism. Early twentieth-century critics classified Warner's work as sentimental and thus lacking in literary value. In the later twentieth century, feminist critics rediscovered The Wide, Wide World, discussing it as a quintessential domestic novel and focusing on analyzing its portrayal of gender dynamics.