Alone

by Marion Harland

"Through long, long years, to seek, to strive, to yearn for human love,—and never quench that thirst; to pour the soul out winning no return—O'er fragile idols, by delusions nursed,—On things that fail us, reed by reed, to lean, to mourn the changed, the far-away, the dead, to send our troubled spirits through the unseenIntensely questioning for treasures fled."

514 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1856

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.