"A remarkable and brave novel. I was astonished at the acute angle of vision and the fullness of sympathy toward both men and women--and children."--Carol Shields

An ahead-of-its-time novel about an unhappy and obsessively house-proud mother of three whose husband is disabled, leaving her free to work in a department store and him to be a Montessori father. One of the ten best-selling novels of 1924 and made into a (silent) film, it was singled out by Elaine Showalter in her recent book on American women writers and was included in the collection Five Hundred Great Books by Women.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958) was one of America's best-known novelists. The Home-Maker has been a bestseller for Persephone Books in the United Kingdom, and with this edition it will be widely available in the United States.

Carol Shields has called this 'a remarkable and brave 1924 novel about being a house husband.' Preface by Karen Knox.

Orphaned as a baby, Betsey is taken in by her flighty maiden aunts. Totally smothered by their overly protective, but well intentioned determination to mother her, Betsey grows into a frail and timid little girl who completely relies on her "Dear Aunt Frances " . When one of the aunts is taken ill, Betsey is sent to live with cousins the aunts heartily disapproved of. There she begins a journey of self discovery and learns many lessons about life, people and relationships. Understood Betsy is one of the best children's books ever written. It isn't quite "Alice in Wonderland," but it is a close runner up. Loke the immortal "Alice" it is as interesting to adults as to children, if not more so . One can read it over and over and always enjoy it.

Understood Betsy is a 1916 novel for children by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. The story tells of Elizabeth Ann, a 9-year-old orphan who goes from a sheltered existence with her father's aunt Harriet and cousin Frances in the city, to living on a Vermont farm with her mother's family, the Putneys, whose child-rearing practices had always seemed suspect to Harriet and her daughter. In her new rural life, Elizabeth Ann comes to be nicknamed "Betsy," and to find that many activities that Frances had always thought too demanding for a little girl are considered, by the Putney family, routine activities for a child: walking to school alone, cooking, and having household duties to perform... (wikipedia.org)