Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster

Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John Grier Home, an old-fashioned orphanage. The children were wholly dependent on charity and had to wear other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual first name was selected by the matron off a grave stone, while her surname was selected out of the phone book. At the age of 18, she has finished her education and is at loose ends, still working in the dormitories at the institution where she was brought up. One day, after the asylum's trustees have made their monthly visit, Jerusha is informed by the asylum's dour matron that one of the trustees has offered to pay her way through college. He has spoken to her former teachers and thinks she has potential to become an excellent writer. He will pay her tuition and also give her a generous monthly allowance. Jerusha must write him a monthly letter, because he believes that letter-writing is important to the development of a writer. However, she will never know his identity; she must address the letters to Mr. John Smith, and he will never reply. Jerusha catches a glimpse of the shadow of her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. Because of this, she jokingly calls him Daddy Long-Legs. She attends a women's college, but the name and location are never identified; however, men from Princeton University are frequently mentioned as dates, so it is certainly on the East Coast. The college is almost certainly based on the author's alma mater, Vassar College, judging from college traditions mentioned. She illustrates her letters with childlike line drawings, also created by Jean Webster.

Jean Webster (1875-1916) was born in Fredonia, New York, the daughter of Charles L. Webster, who was Mark Twain's publisher and business partner. Educated at Vassar College, she must have been a woman with a strong social conscience, perhaps aroused by her visits as a student to orphanages and other institutions (part of her economics course: her degree was in English and economics). She was always concerned for the plight of children who began life with such disadvantages and later she served on committees for prison reform and regularly visited Sing Sing jail. She wrote a number of novels that are now forgotten, but the last two, Daddy-Long-Legs (1912) and its sequel Dear Enemy (1915), have survived both in book form, stage and film versions, and a British musical comedy Love from Judy produced in 1953.
In 1915 Jean Webster married Glenn Ford McKinney. She died a year later, the day after the birth of her daughter.

From the Hardcover edition.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780486423678
ISBN 10	0486423670
Title	Daddy Long Legs
Author	Jean Webster
Series	Evergreen Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Dover Publications Inc.
Year published	2003-03-28
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.