At Last

by Marion Harland

Popular novel first published in 1870, by the author of The Hidden Path and The Empty Heart.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1870

About the author

Mary Virginia Terhune (née Hawes), also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author. At age twenty-three she won a $50 prize from the Southern Era periodical for her article on temperance. Encouraged, she published her first novel, Alone, to great acclaim. Despite giving birth to six children and running a household, she never stopped writing, eventually publishing twenty-five novels and three volumes of short stories, as well as numerous books on travel, biography, colonial history, and domestic guidance.

Despite her successful career, Terhune was generally unsupportive of the nascent feminism of her day. Ironically, according to Susan Koppelman in the Old Maids anthology (the source of this biographical note):

She has long been dismissed as an unimportant writer, partly because of her phenomenal output (I think many critics assume that such quantity can't be of high quality) and partly because of the fact that those who cherish the ideals she advocated do not ordinarily go looking for forgotten women writers.

Terhune's three surviving children also became authors.

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I was initially discouraged by the flowery, purple prose, I found the story to be genuinely engaging. A mid to late-1800's romance novel about acouple kept apart by a domineering guardian and covetous friends, covering the twists and turns of several decades.

(Another ancestor writer, mother to Albert Payson Terhune.)