Susan (Bogert) Warner (11 July 1819-17 March 1885), prolific novelist, is remembered today as the author of a single best-seller, The Wide, Wide World. Indeed, the publishing history of that book rivals its interest as a literary production. It was an outgrowth of Warner's own economic and emotional needs, and its writing made of her a professional. Born in New York City, the daughter of a prosperous lawyer, Henry Whiting Warner, and Anna Bartlett, she lost her mother early, and she and her younger sister, Anna Bartlett Warner (1827-1915), were reared by an aunt. Educated privately in the classics, music, Italian, literature, and history, she alternated her studies with periods of weeping and melancholy. Her father was impoverished by the Panic of 1837, and the family subsequently resided permanently on Constitution Island, opposite West Point, where he purchased a summer home. Between menial domestic chores Warner turned to writing to help...