Books with author Mrs. Mary J. Holmes

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Madam Conway's only daughter, Mrs. Miller, lay near death after giving birth to a baby girl. The infant was rushed out of the room and given to the care of the servant, Hagar. Days later, the noble family scarcely cared that Hagar also became a grandmother. Her own daughter did not receive a doctor's care, and she quickly died. Hagar was left to take care of both baby girls and wondered if hers would grow up to be a servant or a lady. Hagar switched the babies clothes and beds, just to to see how her granddaughter would look. But Hagar didn't have time to undo the change, as Madam Conway ran in to retrieve what she thought was her daughter's baby for the new mother to see since she was awake. The deed was done, and only Hagar knew that her grandbaby was being baptized and christened Margaret Miller, and that the noble one was now named Hester Hamilton and given to the servant. It all seemed even more selfish later, when Mrs. Miller and Hester both died of poor health, and Hagar's grandchild was the picture of health being raised in wealth and nobility. Author Mrs. Mary Jane Holmes wrote 39 novels. Although her goal was to write pure stories that mothers and daughters could share, she gave us much more. Her characters were part of the struggles that encompassed 19th-century social politics. Both her major and minor characters are positive ones who form, renew, and strengthen bonds with one another, and the female characters learn to negotiate the limited power given her by a patriarchal society divided by race, class, and gender. Her heroines gain independence and freedom and improve their own conditions and that of others. With her own life stretching through slavery, the Civil War, and the building of this country, Mary Jane's writing includes the actual fears, prejudices, injustices, hopes, and dreams of a new nation struggling with the concepts of equality and democracy.

Mary Jane Holmes (April 5, 1825 – October 6, 1907) was a bestselling and prolific American author who published 39 popular novels, as well as short stories. Her first novel sold 250,000 copies; and she had total sales of 2 million books in her lifetime, second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Portraying domestic life in small-town and rural settings, she examined gender relationships, as well as those of class and race. She also dealt with slavery and the American Civil War with a strong sense of moral justice. Since the late 20th century she has received fresh recognition and reappraisal, although her popular work was excluded from most 19th-century literary histories.Mary Jane Hawes was born in Brookfield, Massachusetts in 1825, the fifth of Fanny (Olds) and Preston Hawes' nine children.[2] The household was economically modest, but the parents encouraged intellectual endeavor. She may also have been influenced by her uncle, Rev. Joel Hawes (1789-1867), for many years minister at the First Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut, and known for his published sermons and other writings. Preston Hawes died when Mary Jane was 12 and she started teaching school at 13. Interested in writing from an early age, she published her first story at 15.On August 9, 1849 Hawes married Daniel Holmes, a graduate of Yale College from New York City. They moved for a time to Versailles, Kentucky in the Bluegrass Region, where they both taught for a few years. These were formative years, as Holmes used the small-town, rural setting and people she knew as inspiration for her first novel and others set in the antebellum South.