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NauenThen

IHG

Quite by chance, I ran across this remarkable title in the catalogue of the New York public library:

Janey: Being the Record of A Short Interval in the Journey through Life and the Struggle with Society of A Little Girl of Nine, in Which She Repudiates Her Duties as An Amateur Mother, Snares the Most Blundering of Birds, Successfully Invades Grub Street, Tracks the Smallest and Blindest of Gods, Peers behind the Veil of the Seen into the Unseen, Interprets the Great Bard, Grubs at the Root of All Evil, Faces the Three Great Problems, Birth, Death, Love, and Finally, in Passing through the Laborious Process of Becoming Ten, Discovers the Great Illusion.

Janey
is by a writer I (thought I) had never heard of, Inez Haynes Gillmore. Turns out she was a feminist leader and political activist, who lived to be 97 (1873-1970). She was a co-founder of the National Collegiate Equal Suffrage League and a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Women’s Party.

And she wrote the Maida books, about a poor little rich girl, a series of 15 novels that ran from 1910-55. Growing up, we had Maida's Little Hospital, which I read over & over, and I have since read Maida's Little Shop. When I asked, neither my mother nor my next older sister recalled it, so now I don't know what I remember. And now it turns out my younger sister does remember Maida's Little Hospital. Anyway.
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