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Did you know that Nathaniel Hawthorne was livid over a rival author whose book The Lamplighter outsold the Scarlet Letter ten to one, and became the third best selling book of that time? He believed that woman had no right to authorship, or the influence of society. Did you know that the book that Jo was reading in the movie Little Women was titled The Wide Wide World and was the first American book to sell over a million copies? Did you know that the author of Titus: A Comrade of the Cross, published in 1896, was given a thousand dollar award for writing what was considered the most powerful book of the late 1800’s, and within six weeks there was a demand to reprint an extra two hundred thousand copies? Did you know that after The Lamplighter was published, another female author in England started her writing career that led to an immediate embrace of her stories, reaching record breaking sales of over two and a half million copies. Why? I believe it can be summed up best with the following: Maxwell Perkins, Scribner’s editor, once wrote to Marjorie Rawlings, author of The Yearling, that “most of the best books in the world are read by both children and adults. This is a characteristic of a great book, that it is both juvenile and adult,” and that they stand the test of time.

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