Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day, is widely acknowledged as a pioneering work in American realism; Rose, in Rebecca Harding Davis, noted that the book "has been cited as the earliest realistic depiction of an American woman as an individual and as ordinary."

The book was originally titled The Deaf and the Dumb; As Rose notes, Davis was referring not to deaf people who are disabled, but to those who are deaf to everything that is not superficial, and the dumb refers to those who comprehend profound spiritual truths but are unable to express them. At the request of her editor, James T. Fields, Davis changed the title to Margret Howth: A Story of To- Day. "To-Day" in the title refers to the fact that the story took place in current time (at the time when it was written) but also refers to the mundane, material...