Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr was thirty-nine when she began a writing career that lasted nearly forty years, bringing her, as Philip Graham wrote in Notable American Women (1971), to "the front rank of popular American novelists." At her death she had published nearly eighty books, including sixty novels and novellas, of which the best known are Jan Vedder's Wife (1885) and The Bow of Orange Ribbon (1886). Two of her novels, Remember the Alamo (1888) and The Man Between: An International Romance (1906), are available in full text on the World Wide Web. Some of her books are still in print, but she has received little critical attention, and her work is largely unknown today. Yet, her novels remain highly readable and worthy of study for her skill in characterization and her ability to appeal to the popular imagination of her day.

Amelia Edith Huddleston was born in Ulverston, Lancashire, England, the second...