Mary Mapes Dodge

As both a writer and an editor, Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) did more than anyone else to shape American children's literature. Best known for her classic Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates, Dodge was also the founder and editor of St. Nicholas Magazine, the contents of which were a major influence on the development of children's literature during the period now known as a "golden age". Dodge persuaded well-known authors and poets to contribute to St. Nick, among them Louisa May Alcott, Sarah Orne Jewett, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and she taught many of them how to address an audience of children. In this, the first complete study of Dodge as author, journalist, and editor, Susan R. Gannon and Ruth Anne Thompson consider the long-standing influences of St. Nick and its writers. Gannon and Thompson examine the themes that appeared throughout Dodge's writing - from her essays and poems in the United States Journal, where she wrote on topics including women's rights, marriage, and amusements for the family, to the leitmotif of carnivals and Christmas festivities in her novels. Further, the authors look at Dodge the woman, whose own schooling inspired her to create a similar experience for her sons, whose playtime was indistinguishable from their education.