There’s no question that Isabella Alden was a talented writer. The plots for her novels were inventive and realistic, and each of her characters were carefully drawn.
Her niece, author Grace Livingston Hill, wrote that when she was old enough to learn to read, she “devoured [Isabella’s] stories chapter by chapter.” And when Isabella wrote the final chapter to one of the novels she’d been writing, the family often crowded around her, knowing Isabella would read her work aloud. Grace said:
“We listened, breathless, as she read, and made her characters live before us. They were real people to us, as real as if they lived and breathed before us.”
They were probably real people to Isabella, too. When she was interviewed in 1892 for a Philadelphia newspaper, she talked about her writing process. For many years she used a typewriter to write her stories (you can read more about that here), but by the time she was interviewed for the newspaper article, she was using dictation. It greatly increased the speed with which she wrote her books, and added an inadvertent element of entertainment to the task. Here’s how it was described in the article:
“The morning hours are devoted by Mrs. Alden to her literary work, and a person standing in the hall in front of the studio door is highly amused to hear the animated conversation with the varying tones indicative of stern displeasure, then of baby prattle, to be followed soon by the earnest and softened accents of the lover’s pleading; a monologue by Mrs. Alden as she personates her various characters. They are all seen in life, they must all appear in her books.”
Isabella’s characters seem alive and real to us because she wrote about the kind of average people we meet every day; and when her characters come to a crossroads in their lives and face tough decisions, we understand what they’re going through because we (or someone we know) has dealt with similar situations. Her characters cause those of us who read her books to search our own hearts and “see ourselves as God saw us.”
Grace wrote that Isabella’s characters “still live within our memories like people we have known intimately and dwelt among. Ester Ried and Julia Ried, the Four Girls at Chautauqua, Mrs. Solomon Smith—I almost expect to meet some of them in Heaven.”
Isabella Alden 
Yes, I really like Nettie Decker from Little Fishers and Their Nets as well as Flossie Shipley Roberts in The Chautauqua Girls series.
Nettie and Flossie are among my favorites, too, Luba. It’s so hard to choose! —Jenny
So far, I haven’t read many Pansy books, but I like Flossie. Grace and Pansy sound like pantser writers. I do this, too.
I hadn’t thought of it before, Kayla, but I think you’re right — Grace and Pansy were definitely pantsers! —Jenny
I couldn’t pick a favorite character from Isabella’s books. There are so many I love!
Same here, Rebekah! Many of her characters ring so true for me, it’s hard to choose one over another other. —Jenny