SOURCE: “Marietta Holley: ‘Josiah Allen's Wife,’ 1836-1926,” in Legacy, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring, 1985, pp. 3-5.

In the following essay, Winter provides a stylistic overview of Holley's work.

She was called the Female Mark Twain, inheritor of the male tradition of the literary comedians—Mark Twain, Josh Billings, Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby. She depended for much of her style on the upcountry dialect, proverbs and maxims mixed with extravagant images that were the stuff of the “crackerbox philosophers.” Her creative orthography and country patois were actually a transcription of New York State's North Country speech. Marietta Holley's stories chronicled the homely events and hard work that set the rhythm of life for country women: the domestic trials of planting and harvesting, cooking and canning, washing and sewing, marrying and burying. Thus her novels and sketches blend with those of the female local color writers of New England. In...