SOURCE: “Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,” in American Writers of To-Day, Silver, Burdett and Company, 1895, pp. 187-200.

In the following essay, Vedder presents an overview of Phelps's major works.

Lord Byron once said, in describing the sudden fame that came to him from the publication of the first part of “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,” “I awoke next morning and found myself famous.” There was almost as much truth as hyperbole in the saying, and the same remark might have been made by the author of The Gates Ajar. When that book first appeared, more than twenty-five years ago, it attained a popularity of the most extensive and impressive sort. There were some weeks, according to the story told of it by its publisher, when the fate of the book seemed trembling in the balance; then all at once the sales showed a phenomenal increase, and advanced by leaps and bounds. Twenty...