During her thirty-seven years Elizabeth Stuart Phelps combined a literary career with the roles of mother, homemaker, and minister's wife. Her place in American literary history traverses religious and gender lines to the frontiers of realistic fiction. Phelps, who also wrote for the magazine market and produced a series of religious children's books, is best known for her realistic novels. Her legacy was carried on by her daughter, who took her mother's name and established her own career as an author.

The second of nine children of Abigail Wooster Stuart and the Reverend Moses Stuart, Elizabeth Wooster Stuart was born on 13 August 1815 into a strict Calvinist New England family with roots going back to the seventeenth century. Her father was a well-known clergyman, scholar, and professor of Greek and Hebrew literature at Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. By his example and direction the entire family was stimulated to...