SOURCE: Review of The Wide, Wide World. Southern Literary Messenger 20, no. 4 (April 1854): 214-16.

In the following excerpted review, the critic calls The Wide, Wide World “the most delightful tale that has probably ever been written.”

We have no intention of criticising any production of [Susan Warner's] pen, and only fear that we shall be guilty of extravagance in speaking of her writings. We well recollect our first perusal of the Wide Wide World, and we then predicted its success. It deserved to succeed if a pure and beautiful work of Art, full of the most exalted piety, and as true to life and human nature as reality itself, deserve success. Queechy, which followed it was its twin sister; and if the features were somewhat more arch and changeable and inviting, there was no such difference in the heart. The two books were dedicated to a single idea, and...