Bacheller's first draft of the novel was meant for children, which he submitted to St. Nicholas Magazine and other publications, which all rejected it.

[2] For the February and March 1901 issues of The Bookman, it tied with Alice of Old Vincennes as the best-selling book in the United States.

[6] In 1903, twelve photographs by Clarence Hudson White were included in a "de luxe" edition of the novel.

A 1956 article by literary scholar Walter Harding noted that while the book had fallen far out of popularity by then (the copy he reviewed had last been checked out of the library in 1931), "one was not well-read in 1900 unless he had read Eben Holden."

While he opined that "its sentimentality borders on the laughable ... its melodrama is impossible [and] its language is deplorable," he concluded that "despite all this, it is still surprisingly readable.