Nelly's Heroics.
Stowe Headlines
A Women’s Anthology Of Children’s Stories
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Nelly’s Heroics. With Other Heroic Stories. Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., (1883).
8vo.; frontispiece cartoon with caption, “Are you the editor?” with eight other black and white illustrations throughout; pages unnumbered; four pages of ads in the rear; brown cloth; stamped in black and gilt; with upper panel text “Peace Island Series” and illustration; spine stamping with spelling deviation of title—“Nellie’s Heroics”; spine lightly rubbed.
First edition of this collection of nine short stories, each by a different female writer of the late 19th century. In addition to Stowe, whose name appears alone on the spine and title page, Lizzie W. Champney, Kate Upson Clarke, Margaret Bertha Wright, W.H.W. Campbell, Mrs. A.M. Diaz, Mary Densel, Mary Hartwell Catherwood, and Mary E. Wilkins all contributed.
Stowe’s parable-like story, “Nelly’s Heroics”—misspelled on the spine, “Nellie’s Heroics”—centers around a young girl named Nelly, who, despite her good intentions, repeatedly gets into trouble for trying to do heroic things. Stowe suggests that perhaps Nelly’s overworked imagination is the result of reading too many books: for instance, after staying up past her bedtime to read Arabian Nights, Nelly mistakenly thinks a burglar is in the house and causes a commotion in the middle of the night. Nelly’s mother explains to her in the final paragraph of the story that “there are people who don’t care much about little plain every-day duties, who are all the while trying to do something great or distinguished … but they don’t accomplish anything worth doing … People who do great and heroic things are not people who neglect little duties and go about looking for adventures; they are people who are always steady in doing the duty that lies next them.” Nelly takes this advice to heart and according to Stowe, grows up to be a “strong, good woman.”
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