As one of the most popular writers of the nineteenth century, Mary Jane Holmes is estimated to have rivaled Harriet Beecher Stowe in earnings and stand next to E. P. Roe as probably the most widely read of American novelists writing after the Civil War. Her thirty-nine books reached sales of more than two million copies. Several of her books were still in publication long after her death and well into the twentieth century. Early in Holmes's career, Francis S. Street and Francis S. Smith contracted her to write a novel a year for serialization in their New York Weekly in order to compete with the formidable popularity of the New York Ledger, which featured E. D. E. N. Southworth. Holmes easily rose to the task, almost quadrupling the circulation of the Weekly in a matter of only a few years and securing her prominent position among popular...