Stories, Sketches and Studies

In the early years of her married life, Mrs. Stowe was an industrious writer in spite of the numberless cares and distractions which stole away her leisure. Her husband was ambitious that she should win distinction by her pen, and the meagre returns which publication in journals brought her were very welcome, since they helped to eke out a most insufficient income. There was also in Cincinnati a literary society called The Semicolon, which made demands upon its members, of whom Mrs. Stowe was one, for papers, sketches, and poems. All these influences, added to a natural inclination to use her pen, made Mrs. Stowe an active litterateur, and in 1842, the Harpers brought out a collection of her stories and sketches under the title, The Mayflower. The book had a modest reception, and a short life, but after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin it was worth while to revive it, and it was republished with revision and additions, in 1855, by Phillips and Sampson, who then had the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was introduced in these words: -
"Mr. G. B. Emerson, in his late report to the legislature of Massachusetts on the trees and shrubs of that State, thus describes the Mayflower: -
"'Often from beneath the edge of a snow bank are seen rising the fragrant pearly-white or rose-colored flowers of this earliest harbinger of spring. It abounds in the edges of the woods about Plymouth, as elsewhere, and must have been the first flower to salute the storm-beaten crew of the Mayflower on the conclusion of their first terrible winter. In the early years of her married life, Mrs. Stowe was an industrious writer in spite of the numberless cares and distractions which stole away her leisure. Her husband was ambitious that she should win distinction by her pen, and the meagre returns which publication in journals brought her were very welcome, since they helped to eke out a most insufficient income. There was also in Cincinnati a literary society called The Semicolon, which made demands upon its members, of whom Mrs. Stowe was one, for papers, sketches, and poems. All these influences, added to a natural inclination to use her pen, made Mrs. Stowe an active litterateur, and in 1842, the Harpers brought out a collection of her stories and sketches under the title, The Mayflower. The book had a modest reception, and a short life, but after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin it was worth while to revive it, and it was republished with revision and additions, in 1855, by Phillips and Sampson, who then had the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was introduced in these words: -
"Mr. G. B. Emerson, in his late report to the legislature of Massachusetts on the trees and shrubs of that State, thus describes the Mayflower: -
"'Often from beneath the edge of a snow bank are seen rising the fragrant pearly-white or rose-colored flowers of this earliest harbinger of spring. It abounds in the edges of the woods about Plymouth, as elsewhere, and must have been the first flower to salute the storm-beaten crew of the Mayflower on the conclusion of their first terrible winter.