These days the name of Kate Douglas Wiggin is virtually unknown. But
if one mentions the title “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” recognition (at
least in America) is instant. Everyone has heard of Rebecca; her story
has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1903.
It is certainly Mrs. Wiggin's most famous book, and the only one of her
many books that is still in print. Everything else she wrote has slipped
into complete obscurity. Occasionally in an antique shop, one may
still find a copy of her immensely popular seasonal book, “The Birds'
Christmas Carol”, but that is about the extent of what is readily
available, even second-hand.
The Birds' Christas Carol is available as our Etext #721, Nov. 1996.
In 1904, Jack London wrote (from Manchuria!) to say that Rebecca had won
his heart. (“She is real,” he wrote, “she lives; she has given me many
regrets, but I love her.”) Some eighty years later I happened to pick
up and read “Rebecca” for the first time. The book was so thoroughly
enjoyable that when I had finished it, I began at once a search for
other works by the same author--especially for a sequel to “Rebecca”,
which seemed practically to demand one. There was never a sequel
written, but “The New Chronicles of Rebecca” was published in 1907, and
contained some further chapters in the life of its heroine. I had to be
satisfied with that, for the time being. Then, well over a year after
jotting down Mrs. Wiggin's name on my list of authors to “purchase on
sight”, I finally ran across a copy of “The Village Watch-Tower”; and it
was not even a book of which I had heard. It was first published in
1895 by Houghton, who published much of her other work at the time, and
apparently was never published again. Shortly thereafter I found a copy
of her autobiography.
Kate Douglas Wiggin (nee Smith) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
on September 28, 1856. She was raised for the most-part in Maine, which
forms a backdrop to much of her fiction. She moved to California in
the 1870s, and became involved in the “free kindergarten” movement. She
opened the Silver Street Free Kindergarten in San Francisco, the first
free kindergarten in California, and there she worked until the late
1880s (meantime opening her own training school for teachers). Her first
husband, Samuel Wiggin, died in 1889. By then famous, she returned to
New York and Maine. She moved in international social circles, lecturing
and giving readings from her work. In 1895 she married for the second
time (to George Riggs).
At her home in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate and Marin
County, she wrote her first book, “The Birds' Christmas Carol”, to raise
money for her school. The book also proved to be her means of entrance
into publishing, translation, and travel in elite circles throughout
Europe. The book was republished many times thereafter, and translated
into several languages. In addition to factual and educational works
(undertaken together with her sister, Nora Archibald Smith) she also
wrote a number of other popular novels in the early years of the 20th
century, including “Rebecca”, and “The Story of Waitstill Baxter”
(1913). She died in 1923, on August 23, at Harrow-on-Hill, England.
Beverly Seaton observed, in “American Women Writers”, that Mrs. Wiggin
was “a popular writer who expressed what her contemporaries themselves
thought of as 'real life'” (p. 413). “The Village Watch-Tower” I think
is a perfect example of that observation; it captures vividly a few
frozen moments of rural America, right at the twilight of the 19th
century. Most of it was written in the village of Quillcote, Maine,
her childhood home--and certainly the model for the village of these
stories.
No attempt has been made to edit this book for consistency or to
update or “correct” the spelling. Mrs. Wiggin's spelling is somewhat
transitional between modern American and British spellings. The only
liberty taken is that of removing extra spaces in contractions. E.g.,
I have used “wouldn't” where the original has consistently “would
n't”; this is true for all such contractions with “n't” which appeared
inordinately distracting to the modern reader.