Frances Miriam Whitcher wrote some of the best Down East or Yankee humor of the nineteenth century. Historians note that she and B. P. Shillaber created the first fully developed humorous women characters in American literature and it is clear that Whitcher has stronger claims to historical priority than Shillaber. His Mrs. Partington was introduced in the Boston Post in 1847, while Whitcher's Widow Bedott had appeared (under the pseudonym "Frank") in the Saturday Gazette and Lady's Literary Museum a year earlier. Even before Widow Bedott, Whitcher had developed the Widow Spriggins; and after Bedott's triumphant appearance, she added the impressive Aunt Maguire for Godey's Lady's Book. Moreover, Whitcher's women characters are more numerous, more richly conceived, and more convincingly developed than Shillaber's. Her natural inclination to satirize contributes to the sense of authenticity; it gives clarity to portraits that contrast with the softer, sometimes less firmly defined characters...