By Clare Wyatt
I am charmed and transported by the sweetness of this book, voiced with a clear understanding of how real people thought, spoke, lived and loved in the mid-19th century. The narrative is gently paced, inviting and captivating the reader with a different sense of time, responsibility, duty and the family nature of romance. Our young sweethearts behave with a restraint that seems impossibly fictitious in today's world, but the passion is there, deeply felt, and expressed and honored.
The family scenes are especially poignant, with every character coming to life as they expose foibles that clearly run throughout the ages as human nature. I got very attached to several of the supporting characters, and now I want to know this same story from other perspectives! I loved the accurate and interesting details about daily life, within the family circle and in the ventures that our Lizzie makes into the world.
The language may seem overly formal to readers unfamiliar with the period, but the author is careful to be true to the style of historical documents she uses verbatim in the book. We are reminded how much can be conveyed -- and treasured for many lifetimes -- when your life and feelings are recorded in letters! I can imagine Lizzie reading and re-reading every line a thousand times, and now we can all enjoy the same privilege.
This would be a great series for young girls and teenagers looking for a compelling perspective of love and life as perhaps as their own great-great grandparents lived it.
While human nature doesn't really change, our behavior does. I am left longing for the grace of a different era, and celebrating a sweet, gentle and abiding love for the ages.
***
By Sylvia G. Buck
I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying reading "Will you write to me? The Courtship of Lizzie Andrews"! I got excited every time you quoted Edward in his travels to Quaboag Seminary and to Warren. When you live in a small town like ours (pop. under 5000), any recognition is thrilling.
Over my 34 years as Director of our small public library in Warren, Massachusetts, I was invited to read many, many self-published books and I came to dread the experience. Not yours! Your book is such a high caliber effort, it is a real joy to read. I can just imagine you pouring over Edward's letters and wondering how to fit in this or that phrase and quotation and create your story around it. It must have been such an absorbing task. And to think there were 60 letters to work with, over a period of years. I can imagine your excitement to begin weaving your understanding of their lives.
I believe your research has been diligent and persistent and the resulting weaving of fact and fiction is so well done. It is simply a joy to read.
At first I was confused about what Edward was doing at Quaboag Seminary if he'd been attending Harvard. It seemed like a comedown, notwithstanding the claim that Quaboag Seminary was widely esteemed in its heyday. Finally it became clear. Evidently he and 2 others got into some mischief at Harvard for which they were expelled.
I wondered how Edward's father knew about and selected Quaboag Seminary. What were the connections?
On p. 88 Edward said "Home will be pleasanter--since my teacher is to be married during vacation." He was boarding with the Principal, as many out of town students boarded with local residents.
On p. 101, he said he lived with his Principal at Quaboag. Who was the Principal, I wondered? And who did the Principal marry in 1851?
Aha! I found out.
My in-law's family had a family connection to Principal David Mather Kimball through the woman he married as his 2nd wife, Charlotte Maria Lincoln (1821-1881). She was the daughter of Col. Warren Lincoln, a gentleman of wealth and position and his wife Dolly (Warriner Lincoln also from a family of high status. Dolly's sister, Eliza, married Danforth Keyes, the great-grandfather of my mother-in-law. So that's one reason I happen to have the Lincoln and Kimball family lines in my historical collections.
Thank you using the Quaboag Seminary image. And thank you and PJ Watters for working so long and carefully to create this delightful trilogy.
I will return this copy to the library for other readers to enjoy. I would like to own all three books!
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia G. Buck
Retired Librarian of Warren Public Library
***
By Curt Sanders
The first book of three on the courtship of Lizzie Andrews and Edward Jarvis Tenney, 14 and 16 years of age at the time (1850-52) - youthful 1st cousins living in Massachusetts during a fantastic time in American history. Although cousins (not unusual at the time) and young (youth were more mature in a lot of ways then), the letters are a true story view of the young lovers!
Although Lizzie and Edward were engrossed in a courtship in 1850, they did touch upon events surrounding them
- a mere 66 years after the Revolution; 36 years after the War of 1812; and two years after the Mexican-American War.
- Millard Fillmore was President, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
- Edward made a note on women’s rights after hearing a woman publicly speak - only two years earlier the Seneca Falls New York congregation of women declared universal rights with men.
- Edward also attended a sermon by Octavious Brooks Frothingham (1822-1895) - a lesser known but historically significant abolitionist of slavery.
- Medicine was becoming more a science than philosophy. Lizzie’s brother was one of the first to be treated by the father of American
psychiatry, Dr. Luther V. Bell and his successor Dr. Chauncey Booth.
- Americans were starting to move West - Edward mentions the “Homestead Act” in 1851 (he probably meant the “Donation Land Claim Act of 1850” as the Homestead Act wasn’t enacted
until 1862).
- Also in 1850, the US 1850 Census was the first to give names and more detail on family units - a boon for us genealogists in the future.
- Edward attended a lecture by Edward Everett, that fellow who was well noted for his two-hour stem-winding beautiful orations and was the speaker before Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Lincoln’s few minutes of dedication is remembered; Everett’s is a footnote of history!
Despite being a “guy” and not into romance narratives, I enjoyed reading this book. It was filled with history witnessed by the two young lovers. It made me realize that letter writing was an art then - contrasted with texting and email of today. I can’t wait to read Book Two!!
I am charmed and transported by the sweetness of this book, voiced with a clear understanding of how real people thought, spoke, lived and loved in the mid-19th century. The narrative is gently paced, inviting and captivating the reader with a different sense of time, responsibility, duty and the family nature of romance. Our young sweethearts behave with a restraint that seems impossibly fictitious in today's world, but the passion is there, deeply felt, and expressed and honored.
The family scenes are especially poignant, with every character coming to life as they expose foibles that clearly run throughout the ages as human nature. I got very attached to several of the supporting characters, and now I want to know this same story from other perspectives! I loved the accurate and interesting details about daily life, within the family circle and in the ventures that our Lizzie makes into the world.
The language may seem overly formal to readers unfamiliar with the period, but the author is careful to be true to the style of historical documents she uses verbatim in the book. We are reminded how much can be conveyed -- and treasured for many lifetimes -- when your life and feelings are recorded in letters! I can imagine Lizzie reading and re-reading every line a thousand times, and now we can all enjoy the same privilege.
This would be a great series for young girls and teenagers looking for a compelling perspective of love and life as perhaps as their own great-great grandparents lived it.
While human nature doesn't really change, our behavior does. I am left longing for the grace of a different era, and celebrating a sweet, gentle and abiding love for the ages.
***
By Sylvia G. Buck
I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying reading "Will you write to me? The Courtship of Lizzie Andrews"! I got excited every time you quoted Edward in his travels to Quaboag Seminary and to Warren. When you live in a small town like ours (pop. under 5000), any recognition is thrilling.
Over my 34 years as Director of our small public library in Warren, Massachusetts, I was invited to read many, many self-published books and I came to dread the experience. Not yours! Your book is such a high caliber effort, it is a real joy to read. I can just imagine you pouring over Edward's letters and wondering how to fit in this or that phrase and quotation and create your story around it. It must have been such an absorbing task. And to think there were 60 letters to work with, over a period of years. I can imagine your excitement to begin weaving your understanding of their lives.
I believe your research has been diligent and persistent and the resulting weaving of fact and fiction is so well done. It is simply a joy to read.
At first I was confused about what Edward was doing at Quaboag Seminary if he'd been attending Harvard. It seemed like a comedown, notwithstanding the claim that Quaboag Seminary was widely esteemed in its heyday. Finally it became clear. Evidently he and 2 others got into some mischief at Harvard for which they were expelled.
I wondered how Edward's father knew about and selected Quaboag Seminary. What were the connections?
On p. 88 Edward said "Home will be pleasanter--since my teacher is to be married during vacation." He was boarding with the Principal, as many out of town students boarded with local residents.
On p. 101, he said he lived with his Principal at Quaboag. Who was the Principal, I wondered? And who did the Principal marry in 1851?
Aha! I found out.
My in-law's family had a family connection to Principal David Mather Kimball through the woman he married as his 2nd wife, Charlotte Maria Lincoln (1821-1881). She was the daughter of Col. Warren Lincoln, a gentleman of wealth and position and his wife Dolly (Warriner Lincoln also from a family of high status. Dolly's sister, Eliza, married Danforth Keyes, the great-grandfather of my mother-in-law. So that's one reason I happen to have the Lincoln and Kimball family lines in my historical collections.
Thank you using the Quaboag Seminary image. And thank you and PJ Watters for working so long and carefully to create this delightful trilogy.
I will return this copy to the library for other readers to enjoy. I would like to own all three books!
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia G. Buck
Retired Librarian of Warren Public Library
***
By Curt Sanders
The first book of three on the courtship of Lizzie Andrews and Edward Jarvis Tenney, 14 and 16 years of age at the time (1850-52) - youthful 1st cousins living in Massachusetts during a fantastic time in American history. Although cousins (not unusual at the time) and young (youth were more mature in a lot of ways then), the letters are a true story view of the young lovers!
Although Lizzie and Edward were engrossed in a courtship in 1850, they did touch upon events surrounding them
- a mere 66 years after the Revolution; 36 years after the War of 1812; and two years after the Mexican-American War.
- Millard Fillmore was President, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
- Edward made a note on women’s rights after hearing a woman publicly speak - only two years earlier the Seneca Falls New York congregation of women declared universal rights with men.
- Edward also attended a sermon by Octavious Brooks Frothingham (1822-1895) - a lesser known but historically significant abolitionist of slavery.
- Medicine was becoming more a science than philosophy. Lizzie’s brother was one of the first to be treated by the father of American
psychiatry, Dr. Luther V. Bell and his successor Dr. Chauncey Booth.
- Americans were starting to move West - Edward mentions the “Homestead Act” in 1851 (he probably meant the “Donation Land Claim Act of 1850” as the Homestead Act wasn’t enacted
until 1862).
- Also in 1850, the US 1850 Census was the first to give names and more detail on family units - a boon for us genealogists in the future.
- Edward attended a lecture by Edward Everett, that fellow who was well noted for his two-hour stem-winding beautiful orations and was the speaker before Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Lincoln’s few minutes of dedication is remembered; Everett’s is a footnote of history!
Despite being a “guy” and not into romance narratives, I enjoyed reading this book. It was filled with history witnessed by the two young lovers. It made me realize that letter writing was an art then - contrasted with texting and email of today. I can’t wait to read Book Two!!
