SOURCE: Review of Mabel Vaughan, by Maria Susanna Cummins. North American Review 86 (January 1858): 287.

In the following review, the critic exalts Cummins's second novel, applauding its moral truths and finding its plot development, characterization, and style superior to those in The Lamplighter.

Mabel Vaughan has disappointed our expectations in a way in which we are glad to be disappointed. To our mind it very far outdistances its predecessor in merit. In The Lamplighter, we admired the personage that gives name to the book, and could not but sympathize with the fortunes of the heroine; yet the story did not seem to us skilfully constructed, and many of the incidents were beyond the range of even a novelist's probability. In this new tale, Mabel, the central figure, yields in interest to no character of recent fiction; the plot is strongly conceived, and developed naturally and happily; and the sketches of...