A birthday, a quarrel, a game, a conversation at home: for Elizabeth Prentiss, a child’s small experiences could carry serious questions. How do we learn patience? What do our words do to other people? What does love ask of us when we would rather please ourselves?
Readers who know the adult spiritual journey of Stepping Heavenward can discover another part of Prentiss’s literary life in the Little Susy books. These are stories for children, shaped by the homes, beliefs, and habits of the nineteenth century.
Before Stepping Heavenward
Little Susy’s Six Birthdays appeared in New York in 1853. In her opening address, Prentiss says she read the manuscript to children of several ages before sending it to press. That detail invites us to imagine the stories first as something heard together, with a listener’s attention and questions close at hand.
Little Susy’s Six Teachers and Little Susy’s Little Servants extended this world. Together the three works join story and instruction, family affection and Protestant religious formation. Play, illness, family worship, visits, and ordinary conversation all have a place.
Stories to Read with Conversation
Reading historical children’s books together need not mean treating every household custom as a model for today. These stories retain assumptions about childhood, discipline, family roles, and servants that deserve explanation. Illness, suffering, and death also belong to their world; adults may want to read ahead before sharing them.
A family read-aloud gives room to pause over unfamiliar language, ask why a character acted as she did, or distinguish a lasting moral question from a particular historical custom. Independent readers comfortable with longer chapter books may read on their own, but this is not a modern leveled reader, and we do not assign it a precise age or grade.
Keeping the Historical Voice
The Old Glory Press edition gathers the complete texts of all three works with an original historical introduction. Newly typeset pages preserve the historical wording and character rather than rewriting the stories in contemporary language. This is neither an adaptation nor an annotated edition.
The collection also includes 13 historical engravings: four from Six Birthdays, five from Six Teachers, and four from Little Servants. They are part of the books’ historical visual world, not newly commissioned illustrations.
A Wider Elizabeth Prentiss
Prentiss’s writing reaches beyond a single novel or hymn. Her children’s books, adult fiction, devotional writing, poetry, and letters offer different ways into her concern with faith in daily life. The Little Susy stories belong within that wider record.
For more, read our Elizabeth Prentiss biography or explore the Elizabeth Prentiss Collection. For another view of domestic life in her fiction, see Aunt Jane’s Hero and the making of a Christian home.
Sources and Further Reading
- Elizabeth Prentiss, Little Susy’s Six Birthdays (1853), including the opening address to readers.
- Prentiss, Little Susy’s Six Teachers and Little Susy’s Little Servants, title-page-dated 1861 Randolph issues used for this edition; no first-edition claim is made for those issues.
- George L. Prentiss, The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss (1882).
The Little Susy Stories
Six Birthdays, Six Teachers, and Little Servants
