Mrs. Deland and Her Dog - Photo

This photo is from an article in Good Housekeeping Magazine, Volume 44, 1907, page 506. The dog is a "bob-tailed sheep dog . . . from the kennels of Mrs. Richard Harding Davis".

The Truth of the Novel - by Margaret Deland

Articles by Margaret Deland published in The Independent, Volume 51, 1899:

• The Truth of the Novel
• The Ethics of the Novel
• The Value of the Novel
  

Margaret Deland's Reception Room

The following illustration is from the National Magazine, Volume 9, 1899, page 527. It depicts the reception room in Margaret Deland's home on Mount Vernon Street in Boston. The windowsill is lined with pots of hyacinths; and there are bookshelves against the wall.

Margaret Deland Comments on Dr. Lavendar

The central character in Margaret Deland's tales of Old Chester is the minister Dr. Lavendar. He is a wonderful character. One wishes he were a real person.

In an interview in the New York Times of March 28, 1920, Mrs. Deland has the following to say about Dr. Lavendar:

"She denied him a flesh-and-blood embodiment but she said he was a composite of her husband, and an uncle of hers, Dr. William Campbell, once President of Rutgers College. 'But Dr. Lavendar was also made up,' she said; 'I had thought of an old minister as a moving factor in a series of stories of plain folk; so I just put certain qualities, like butter and eggs, together, and Dr. Lavendar was the cake.'"

The article goes on to say that people had written to Mrs. Deland to ask for Dr. Lavendar's address so that they might put themselves under his spiritual guidance. It would indeed be wonderful to have someone like Dr. Lavendar in one's life. He is a wonderful combination of common sense and spiritual light and has a way with those who seek his guidance in Mrs. Deland's tales of Old Chester.

Around Old Chester- by Margaret Deland

Around Old Chester
by Margaret Deland
New York: Harper and Brothers
c. 1898, 1915 edition

American author Margaret Deland (1857-1945) is perhaps best known for her novel John Ward, Preacher (1888). She also wrote a series of stories set in the fictional town of Old Chester, Pennsylvania. These are delightful stories which remind me of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford.

Chronicles of Carlingford - The Executor

The Executor
by Margaret Oliphant
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
Volume 89, pages 595-614
May 1861

The Executor is the first story in Mrs. Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford series. Other titles in the series are:

• The Rector
• The Doctor's Family
• Salem Chapel
• The Perpetual Curate
• Miss Marjoriebanks
• Phoebe Junior

The Women Who Make Our Novels (1918)

The Women Who Make Our Novels
by Grant M. Overton
New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1918

Chapters on

• Edith Wharton
• Alice Brown
• Ellen Glasgow
• Gertrude Atherton
• Mary Roberts Rinehart
• Kathleen Norris
• Margaret Deland
• Gene Stratton-Porter
• Eleanor H. Porter
• Kate Douglas Wiggin
• Mary Johnston
• Corra Harris
• Mary Austin
• Mary S. Watts
• Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• Anna Katharine Green
• Helen R. Martin
• Sophie Kerr
• Marjorie Benton Cooke
• Grace S. Richmond
• Willa Sibert Cather
• Clara Louise Burnham
• Demeira Vaka
• Edna Ferber
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher
• Amelia E. Barr
• Alice Duer Miller
• Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
• Harriet T. Comstock
• Honore Willsie
• Frances Hodgson Burnett

Click on the title at the beginning of this post to view/download this book at Google Books.