Novel
Sowing Seeds in Danny
Nellie McClung · 1908
Synopsis
Millford, a small town in Manitoba. The Watsons, who have come from the Ottawa Valley, have nine children; the father, a man of few words, works on the railway, the mother takes in washing for other people. Pearl, twelve, keeps house and makes up stories for her brothers. Mrs J. Burton Francis, a well-to-do lady nourished on a treatise on motherhood, notes her good works in a little red notebook and sets about sowing virtue in little Danny, aged four.
Context
The book grew out of a short story written in 1902 for a competition run by the magazine Collier's, at the urging of the author's mother-in-law, the wife of a Methodist minister; an American publisher encouraged her to turn it into a novel. It appeared in 1908 in Toronto and New York and sold about one hundred thousand copies. The same mother-in-law then organised a public reading of the book in a Winnipeg church, in aid of a home run by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and her career as a lecturer dates from that event. Two sequels made little Pearl the heroine of a trilogy.
Who it is for
A funny novel, written for a wide readership, whose edifying purpose is not hidden; the Irish speech of the characters is transcribed as it is pronounced.
Prizes and reception
A national success from the moment it appeared, it made its author known and opened up the platforms from which she later conducted her political campaigns.
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