Mary Mapes Dodge

In Washington FHB quickly made new friends, particularly the journalist Julia Schayer (who soon after they met wrote of her as the Coming Woman). Within a few years she made the acquaintance of...

As a mother of two small boys, FHB began writing occasional children's stories for her friend Mary Mapes Dodge , editor from 1873 of Saint Nicholas, a magazine for young readers published by Scribner's .

FHB began writing this children' novel in 1884 after she had been suffering from writing block. She began telling her son Vivian, aloud, a story of an American boy, a no-nonsense, baseball-playing New Yorker...