About the Author
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and died in Metuchen, New Jersey. Among her published regional short fiction and novels are A Humble Romance and Other Stories, A New England Nun and Other Stories, Jane Field, and The Portion of Labor. In 1926 she received the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinction in fiction. That same year, she and Edith Wharton were among the first women to be elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Charles Johanningsmeier is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. He is the author of Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, 1860-1900.