"Take the tightening gold and silver band from your wife's brain and bid her think for herself. It may be a risk, especially for those who have married dolls instead of women." — Mary Elizabeth Dodge

The impressive literary career of Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge didn't begin in earnest until after the disappearance and death of her husband in 1858. To support herself and her two young sons, she went to work for her father, the agricultural chemist and inventor James J. Mapes, at his periodicals. Her contributions (published under a variety of pseudonyms) to WORKING FARMER and UNITED STATES JOURNAL ranged from poetry, to serials, to advice on the liberation of women, and introduced Dodge to the behind-the-scenes mechanisms of running a magazine.

Dodge soon realized that working for her father (who was perpetually broke in spite of his professional successes) would never offer sufficient income, and so she quickly branched out to writing for other magazines and publishers. From warm-hearted juvenilia like THE IRVINGTON STORIES (her first book) to editorial screeds like "The Shoddy Aristocracy of America" (published in London's CORNHIILL MAGAZINE), the list of Dodge's publishing credits grew exponentially throughout the 1860s and '70s.

Her authorial legacy rests firmly on 1865's HANS BRINKER, OR THE SILVER SKATES. So popular was her tale of "child-life in Holland [which she] intended for the young-hearted of all ages" that over 300,000 copies sold in its first year — only Dickens's OUR MUTUAL FRIEND sold as robustly that year. More than 100 editions in multiple languages were printed in Dodge's lifetime.

Her most lasting influence, however, is found in her editorial work. From 1868-1873, she worked as an associate editor for HEARTH AND HOME (briefly "sharing" duties with Harriet Beecher Stowe). As with previous editorships, Dodge's contributions to HEARTH AND HOME were both legion and largely hidden behind pseudonyms. ("Uncle Tim," who produced "puzzles, odd paragraphs, and jolly rhymes" was one of the most popular.)

At the end of 1872, Roswell Smith (co-founder of SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY) approached Dodge about creating a children's magazine, and in 1873, ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE (so named by Dodge herself) was established. Over the course of the next 30 years, until her death in 1905, Dodge would be a driving force not only at ST. NICHOLAS but in the whole of juvenile publishing. She routinely secured offerings from writers and artists with enormous popular caché: Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, George MacDonald, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Joel Chandler Harris, Helen Hunt Jackson, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Thomas Moran, Frederic Remington, and more. Indeed, her influence extended well into the next generation. Among the youthful submitters to St. Nicholas League (the magazine's monthly contests department) were future heavyweights Rudyard Kipling, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, E.B. White, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Bennett Cert (eventual co-founder of Random House).

Offered here are 86 volumes from Dodge's personal library. Highlights include many volumes with presentation inscriptions from numerous Dodge contemporaries: Noah Brooks; Alice Cary; Mary Booth ("You have won a signal triumph in making what is confessedly the brightest and best of American juvenile magazines"); Charles Warner Dudley ("your Literature is better than most other people's lives, and your Life is better than most people's Literature"); Lucretia Hale; Laurence Hutton (whose A BOY I KNEW was "given to the world by St. Nicholas and Mrs. Dodge"); Robert Johnson Underwood; Carolyn Wells (whose collection of verse was "not so good as [Dodge's] own"); John Greenleaf Whittier; Kate Douglas Wiggins; and Donald Mitchell ("With memories of our pleasant fellowship when I was Captain and she Lieutenant - and with no less pleasant – of the new fellowship (a juster arrangement) when she is Captain and I only Corporal of the guard"). There are also books gifted to Dodge by friends and family; books Dodge gifted to her son and daughter-in-law; as well as books that Dodge gifted to herself ("Mary Mapes Dodge, With many good wishes, from herself Xmas '90"); and an autograph letter in Dodge's hand that responds to an inquiry regarding her use of pseudonyms. Also included is a reading copy of Catharine Morris Wright's Dodge biography LADY OF THE SILVER SKATES.

Taken as a whole, the collection offers an intimate window into the private reading life and professional and social circles of one of the most highly regarded editors of the Victorian era, a woman whose exacting vision and editorial acumen helped to shape a full third of the 19th century publishing landscape.

Read more: Catharine Wright Morris, Lady of the Silver Skates.