Maria Susanna Cummins is known for one book which made publishing history when it appeared in 1854. That book is The Lamplighter. Cummins was one of the most successful of the women authors, along with Mary Jane Holmes and Susan Bogert Warner, whose works of domestic fiction dominated the book-buying patterns of mid-nineteenth-century American girls and women.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, of Judge David Cummins and Mehitable Cave Cummins, she was dominated by her intelligent and successful father, who evidently encouraged her to read widely and to develop her mind. He sent her to Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's Young Ladies School in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she not only met other bright young ladies but doubtless also came into contact with one of the most respected of American novelists of that time, Mrs. Sedgwick's sister-in-law Catharine Sedgwick, whose A New England Tale (1822) and Hope Leslie (1827) were held in high esteem. Catharine...