The Birds' Christmas Carol

by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Overview

"Christmas Classics" is proud to present you a carefully selected range of fiction and prose for the most beautiful time of the year. You can spot them easily by the red book cover and the golden bells in the middle. A beautiful story full of myth and pathos.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000733073
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	85 KB

About the Author

Kate Douglas Wiggin (September 28, 1856 - August 24, 1923) was an American educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor.

Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of lawyer Robert N. Smith, and of Welsh descent. Kate herself experienced a happy childhood, even though it was coloured by the American Civil War and her father's death. Kate and her sister Nora were still quite young when their widowed mother moved her little family from Philadelphia to Portland, Maine, then, three years later, upon her remarriage, to the little village of Hollis. There Kate matured in rural surroundings, with her sister and her new baby brother, Philip.

In 1881, Kate married (Samuel) Bradley Wiggin, a San Francisco lawyer. According to the customs of the time, she was required to resign her teaching job. Still devoted to her school, she began to raise money for it through writing, first The Story of Patsy (1883), then The Birds' Christmas Carol (1887). Both privately printed books were issued commercially by Houghton Mifflin in 1889, with enormous success.

During the spring of 1923 Kate Wiggin traveled to England as a New York delegate to the Dickens Fellowship. There she became ill and died, at age 66, of bronchial pneumonia. At her request, her ashes were brought home to Maine and scattered over the Saco River.

Editorial Reviews

"A well-known Christmas story, first published in 1888, which has both humor and pathos." Wilson Children's Catalog

From the Publisher