She was able to persuade many of the great writers of the world to contribute to her children's magazine – Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Bret Harte, John Hay, Charles Dudley Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, and scores of others.

With Donald Grant Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dodge was one of the earliest editors of Hearth and Home, and for several years, she conducted the household and children's department of that journal.

Her parents were James Jay Mapes, the distinguished promoter of scientific farming in the United States, and Sophia Furman (or Ferrman).

A small cottage or farm-house which adjoined the orchard on her father's estate was taken for use as a study, and Dodge and her boys soon transformed it into a cozy "den".

It was her work in this field which first attracted the attention of Dr. J. G. Holland and Roswell Smith when, early in the 1870s, as directors of the company which published The Century Magazine, they began to consider the publication of a new juvenile monthly.

The house decided to bring out the first number in November, and Dodge returned from Europe, having found nothing in the publications there to modify her original plan.

Indeed, within a few months after the issue of the first number, Messrs. Osgood & Co. acknowledged that they could not stand against their rival, and made a proposition which resulted in the merging of Our Young Folks into St.

[7] Dodge's first published article, "Shoddy Aristocracy in America", and the manner of its publication, were as much the outcome of her susceptibility to the human, as well as the literary, appeal of life as to her sense of humor and instinct for artistic expression.

Because it was based upon personal observation the article was sent to The Cornhill Magazine, of London, as a publication safely removed from the comedy and the actors it presented.

[7] Her first short story, "My Mysterious Enemy", was promptly accepted by Harper's Magazine, and "The Insanity of Cain", a brilliant piece of special pleading, and one of her most characteristic essays in the humorous or satirical vein, attained instant popularity at the time of its publication in Scribner's Monthly.

This article grew out of a remark to Roswell Smith when Dodge and he were discussing the recent acquittal of a criminal on the plea of emotional insanity.

She resolved to make the Netherlands the scene of a juvenile tale, and give the youngsters so much of the history of that country as should tell itself, naturally, through the evolution of the story.

In the heat of kindled imagination, she began to tell her children a story of life in the Netherlands, weaving into it much interesting material from the history of that country, which at that time she had never seen.

She worked upon the manuscript from morning till night, and sought every source of information which could make her pages more true to life or more entertaining to her readers.

She ransacked libraries for books upon the Netherlands; made every traveler whom she knew tell her his tale of that country; and submitted every chapter to the test of the criticism of two accomplished Dutchmen living near her.

Among its contents were a clever satire, "The Insanity of Cain", which at once attracted wide notice, and the mirth-provoking comicality in Irish dialect, "Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question".

This skit – which was compared in rank to Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" – had an enormous popularity in its day, and was later included in many collections of humorous masterpieces.

Charlotte Cushman immediately gave it a place of honor in her public readings as one of her favorite selections, and sending for its author, asked her to write a companion-piece.

[1] "The Two Mysteries", "Enfoldings", and "The Compact " demonstrated her depth and tenderness of feeling, intellectual poise, spiritual insight, and simplicity of expression.

"[7] Underlying a style of spontaneous charm, and coupled with humor whose thrusts leave no sting, are intellectual integrity, delight in discovering and acknowledging in others gifts of mind or spirit, responsiveness, a quickness to feel and believe as buoyant as if her energies had not been claimed by an absorbing profession, and an outlook undimmed by ambitions and activities.