Her books included: "Tempest and Sunshine" (1854), "English Orphans" (1855), "Homestead on the Hillside" (1855), "Lena Rivers" (1856), "Meadow Brook" (1857), "Dora Deane" (1858), "Cousin Maude" (1860), "Marian Gray" 186^, "Hugh Worthington" (1864), "Cameron Vide" (1867).

"Rose Mather" (1868), "Ethelyn’s Mistake" (1869), "Edna Browning" (1872), "Mildred" (1877), "Forest House" (1879), "Daisy Thornton," "Queenie Hetherton" (1883), "Christmas Stories" (1884), "Bessie's Fortune" (1885).

[1][4] In 1852 the Holmes family returned to New York and settled in Brockport, a short distance west of Rochester, where Daniel read law and was ultimately admitted to the bar.

Its central girl characters, Julia and Fanny, were reportedly modeled on the local family of John Singleton and his daughters Bettie and Susan.

[6] The portrayal of girls with contrasting characters was resolved with a sense of moral justice, as they both traveled personal journeys of growth.

[1] As The Nation noted in its obituary at her death: It is an eternal paradox of our world of letters that the books which enjoy the largest sale are barely recognized as existing by the guardians of literary tradition.

Mrs. Mary Jane Holmes, who died Sunday at Brockport, N.Y., wrote thirty-nine novels with aggregate sales, it is said, of more than two million copies, and yet she had not even a paragraph devoted to her life and works in the histories of American Literature.

("The Week")[4]The theme of most of her novels was domestic life, reflecting society in the antebellum years, as well as during and after the American Civil War.

[7]Critics of the time and early 20th century classified Holmes' and other women authors' work as "sentimental" and downplayed it because of appeal to the common reader.

Recent critics have appreciated how Holmes grappled seriously with issues of gender, race and class, as well as slavery and the Civil War.

While Holmes traveled extensively to Europe and Asia, trips from which she collected art, she continued to write and publish about one book annually.