A fascinating, capable, and prolific author and, for fifty years, editor of her day's most successful magazine, Sarah Josepha Hale influenced immeasurably American middle-class mores. Sensitive to the contemporary social currents, astute in her assessment of the status quo, compassionate in the directives she set forth, and diplomatic in pursuing her goals, she molded the course of education, charitable enterprise, and woman's position in American life. The literature she wrote for children was an integral dimension of her intent to improve their education and of a piece with the objectives of her other literary works: to teach truth and to build character while imparting pleasure through story and verse. Ironically, while the most famous of her poems, "Mary's Lamb" ("Mary Had a Little Lamb"), lives on as traditional nursery lore, its author's name has been all but forgotten, most people crediting the lilting lines to Mother Goose.

Sarah...