Tag: Novels

The Voices in Isabella’s Head

Published on by Isabella Alden6 Comments

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.”

Four young women sit in a Victorian era room with bookcases lining one wall. One woman reads a book with her back to the others. Another woman reads a book aoud to two others.

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.”

A young woman sits in a room near a fireplace where a fire is burning. She wears an orange dress from about the year 1910 and holds a large sheet of paper she is reading.

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.”

In a dimly lit room, a woman stands near a table with a lamp on it. She holds a piece of paper she is reading. On the table is a tea pot and two tea cups and saucers. Seated at the table is another young woman who is listening.

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.”

Do you have a favorite character from Isabella’s books?

Good Neighbors

Published on by Isabella Alden10 Comments

Many people who love to read Isabella Alden’s books also enjoy the novels written by her niece, Grace Livingston Hill.

If you’ve ever searched for some of Grace’s titles, you’re not alone. Used copies of her novels are hard to find. If they are listed for sale on Internet sites, such as Ebay, fans immediately snap them up.

In the days before the Internet, fans had to search through used book stores to find her books. In some cases, they turned to newspapers to try to find copies. Here’s one example:

In the 1990s an Illinois newspaper had a regular column called “Good Neighbors.”

The column shared readers’ advice on a variety of topics, and gave readers a chance to ask or answer questions.

In March 1996 they ran a brief paragraph in the Good Neighbors column:

The newspaper received quite a few responses! Here are some of them:

You can tell there was a little bit of a bidding war going on, with some readers offering to pick the books up and pay for telephone calls (at a time when there were “toll” charges for calling a number in a different area code).

It happened again in 2001, when “M.B. of Lexington” offered to give away dozens of Grace Livingston Hill books:

It sounds like the newspaper was quite surprised to learn so many people were interested in novels that were written (at that time) almost 100 years before. And yet, Grace Livingston Hill’s books are still popular!

How about you? Do you read and collect Grace Livingston Hill novels? Do you have a complete collection? What are the methods you use to hunt down copies of her books?