The Acquisitions Table: Ruth Chenery

Davis, Caroline E. Kelly.  Ruth Chenery.  Boston: Henry Hoyt, ca. 1867.

This comic frontispiece captures the embarrassment of young Ruth Chenery; the well-intentioned young woman made a pudding only to discover that she had used a cracked and hopelessly damaged dish, and she receives a sound scolding from her maiden Aunt Keziah.  The struggle of high-spirited young women to get along with their staid aunts was a common plot, particularly in the juvenile religious fiction that became popular after 1850.

Published by

Laura Wasowicz

Curator of Children's Literature, American Antiquarian Society

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