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The Hall in the Grove
The good folk of Centerville were scandalized Mrs. Fenton, a simple housewife, was having gatherings in her parlor, where she had the gall to mix idle, uneducated folk with members of the well-educated upper class. There, along with a law student and an eminent professor, sat a housemaid and the cigar-smoking, good-for-nothing Ward boys and their equally idle companion Paul The reason for their monthly gatherings? To form Centerville's own chapter of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Society Convinced this was a foolish enterprise, the townspeople made no secret of their distaste that such a ludicrous mix of people would gather to study ancient Rome, theology . . . and the Bible.Then, beyond anyone's wildest imaginings, miracles began to happen.
Heartwarming stories of faith and love by Grace Livingston Hill's aunt--Isabella Alden. Each book is similar in style and tone to Hill's and is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Heartwarming stories of faith and love by Grace Livingston Hill's aunt--Isabella Alden. Each book is similar in style and tone to Hill's and is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
- GenresFictionChristian Fiction
399 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
12 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Pansy
338 books31 followersNote: In her lifetime, Isabella Macdonald Alden was usually published under the pseudonym Pansy, and occasionally under the name Mrs. G.R. Alden.
Aunt to Grace Livingston Hill
The sixth of seven children born to Isaac and Myra Spafford Macdonald, of Rochester, New York, Isabella Macdonald received her early education from her father, who home-schooled her, and gave her a nickname - "Pansy" - that she would use for many of her publications. As a girl, she kept a daily journal, critiqued by her father, and she published her first story - The Old Clock - in a village paper when she was ten years old.
Macdonald's education continued at the Oneida Seminary, the Seneca Collegiate Institute, and the Young Ladies Institute, all in New York. It was at the Oneida Seminary that she met her long-time friend (and eventual co-author), Theodosia Toll, who secretly submitted one of Macdonald's manuscripts in a competition, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the publication of her first book, Helen Lester, in 1865.
Macdonald also met her future husband, the Rev. Gustavus Rossenberg Alden, at the Oneida Seminary, and the two were married in 1866. Now Isabella Macdonald Alden, the newly-married minister's wife followed her husband as his postings took them around the country, dividing her time between writing, church duties, and raising her son Raymond (born 1873).
A prolific author, who wrote approximately one hundred novels from 1865 to 1929, and co-authored ten more, Alden was also actively involved in the world of children's and religious periodicals, publishing numerous short stories, editing the Sunday Juvenile Pansy from 1874-1894, producing Sunday School lessons for The Westminster Teacher for twenty years, and working on the editorial staff of various other magazines (Trained Motherhood, The Christian Endeavor).
Highly influenced by her Christian beliefs, much of Alden's work was explicitly moral and didactic, and often found its way into Sunday School libraries. It was also immensely popular, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with an estimated 100,000 copies of Alden's books sold, in 1900.
Information taken from:
readseries.com
isabellamacdonaldalden.com
Aunt to Grace Livingston Hill
The sixth of seven children born to Isaac and Myra Spafford Macdonald, of Rochester, New York, Isabella Macdonald received her early education from her father, who home-schooled her, and gave her a nickname - "Pansy" - that she would use for many of her publications. As a girl, she kept a daily journal, critiqued by her father, and she published her first story - The Old Clock - in a village paper when she was ten years old.
Macdonald's education continued at the Oneida Seminary, the Seneca Collegiate Institute, and the Young Ladies Institute, all in New York. It was at the Oneida Seminary that she met her long-time friend (and eventual co-author), Theodosia Toll, who secretly submitted one of Macdonald's manuscripts in a competition, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the publication of her first book, Helen Lester, in 1865.
Macdonald also met her future husband, the Rev. Gustavus Rossenberg Alden, at the Oneida Seminary, and the two were married in 1866. Now Isabella Macdonald Alden, the newly-married minister's wife followed her husband as his postings took them around the country, dividing her time between writing, church duties, and raising her son Raymond (born 1873).
A prolific author, who wrote approximately one hundred novels from 1865 to 1929, and co-authored ten more, Alden was also actively involved in the world of children's and religious periodicals, publishing numerous short stories, editing the Sunday Juvenile Pansy from 1874-1894, producing Sunday School lessons for The Westminster Teacher for twenty years, and working on the editorial staff of various other magazines (Trained Motherhood, The Christian Endeavor).
Highly influenced by her Christian beliefs, much of Alden's work was explicitly moral and didactic, and often found its way into Sunday School libraries. It was also immensely popular, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with an estimated 100,000 copies of Alden's books sold, in 1900.
Information taken from:
readseries.com
isabellamacdonaldalden.com
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 1, 2023
Rereading books like this make me want to join a C.L.S.C. and take a trip to Chautauqua. This story is long with lots of main characters, but it’s so good. Each character is unique and different that you never mix them up. Even Effie and Aimie, and James, Joe, and Paul are all individuals with different tastes and personalities. And of course Carolyn and Robert, and Doctor Monteith, and well, I can’t tell you all about them as I wouldn’t do them justice.
I love all the bits of actual lectures from Chautauqua that are sprinkled in the story and how they affect different characters in the story. And the descriptions of Chautauqua and the woods and the lake and the Hall, and all the other places delighted me. I would love to slip back in time and go stay in a delightful cottage with corner cupboards on the Chautauqua grounds.
I will note that if you read the original version, there is a chapter where a speaker talks about evolution as true, but in the copy I read it had been omitted.
Yes, I recommend this book, and yes, I plan to read it again.
I love all the bits of actual lectures from Chautauqua that are sprinkled in the story and how they affect different characters in the story. And the descriptions of Chautauqua and the woods and the lake and the Hall, and all the other places delighted me. I would love to slip back in time and go stay in a delightful cottage with corner cupboards on the Chautauqua grounds.
I will note that if you read the original version, there is a chapter where a speaker talks about evolution as true, but in the copy I read it had been omitted.
Yes, I recommend this book, and yes, I plan to read it again.
October 21, 2018
An absolutely delightful read, as are all her books.
September 16, 2017
Timeless Chautauqua
I have read almost all of Isabella Alden’s books, although I have only reviewed one that I bought as an e-book. Her other books I borrowed from the church library several years ago, and I always wanted to re-read them, but, as with so many good intentions, it never happened. This book happens to be one of the few I haven’t read before.
Mrs Martha Fenton, wife of Robert, and doting mother of son, Robert, is an excellent wife and mother, a housekeeper par excellence. Everything she does is for her family, especially her son, so one day when she can’t help him with a history question he asks her, she feels her lack of education deeply. Fortuitously, she hears that very day about a literary circle, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (those familiar with Alden’s books will know the background about Chautauqua), and it seems there are many CLSC branches across the country. Members study books, pledging themselves to forty minutes of study a day, and then they gather and discuss/debate what they have learned. Mrs Fenton is energised and decides to start a Literary Circle in Centreville, but how to go about it? After setbacks from a patronising pastor, and a class-conscious woman, Mrs Fenton gets encouragement from unexpected quarters, and at the first meeting of the Centreville Literary and Scientific Circle there is a good turnout with a diverse group of people. Included are three of the town’s “loafers”, eighteen-year old twins James (Jim) and Joseph (Joe) Ward, and nineteen-year old Paul Adams, as well as Caroline Raynor, Mrs Chester’s second girl (housemaid). The president of the Society is the Rev. Gilbert Monteith, D. D., a very eminent professor and an intellectual giant in Centreville.
Without going into details, the Circle is a success and has a profound impact upon many of those attending, and also upon the town as a whole. Come the season, a large number of the Centreville Circle journey to Chautauqua for the six- week programme, and if the Circle has a profound impact on some of the members, it is as nothing compared to the impact being in Chautauqua has. The speakers and preachers are distinguished and eloquent, including General Garfield (although this is election year 1880). Strangely, out of all those respectable members, the first two people to make a life-changing, eternity-changing decision are the least likely.
The characters are realistically portrayed and some of them show unlikeable qualities, but they also show the reality of the social divide of the time, and I became immersed in their stories. There are quite a number of humorous moments as well as some poignant ones, adding up to a very good story. As with all Mrs Alden’s books, her emphasis is on the gospel, and through her stories, she has ministered to an untold number of people; she is a missionary/evangelist through her novels, and I think this novel is possibly one of her best.
Footnote: digitisation has caused a problem with some words and names, the most common one seeming to be changing Fenton to Kenton (just saying).
I have read almost all of Isabella Alden’s books, although I have only reviewed one that I bought as an e-book. Her other books I borrowed from the church library several years ago, and I always wanted to re-read them, but, as with so many good intentions, it never happened. This book happens to be one of the few I haven’t read before.
Mrs Martha Fenton, wife of Robert, and doting mother of son, Robert, is an excellent wife and mother, a housekeeper par excellence. Everything she does is for her family, especially her son, so one day when she can’t help him with a history question he asks her, she feels her lack of education deeply. Fortuitously, she hears that very day about a literary circle, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (those familiar with Alden’s books will know the background about Chautauqua), and it seems there are many CLSC branches across the country. Members study books, pledging themselves to forty minutes of study a day, and then they gather and discuss/debate what they have learned. Mrs Fenton is energised and decides to start a Literary Circle in Centreville, but how to go about it? After setbacks from a patronising pastor, and a class-conscious woman, Mrs Fenton gets encouragement from unexpected quarters, and at the first meeting of the Centreville Literary and Scientific Circle there is a good turnout with a diverse group of people. Included are three of the town’s “loafers”, eighteen-year old twins James (Jim) and Joseph (Joe) Ward, and nineteen-year old Paul Adams, as well as Caroline Raynor, Mrs Chester’s second girl (housemaid). The president of the Society is the Rev. Gilbert Monteith, D. D., a very eminent professor and an intellectual giant in Centreville.
Without going into details, the Circle is a success and has a profound impact upon many of those attending, and also upon the town as a whole. Come the season, a large number of the Centreville Circle journey to Chautauqua for the six- week programme, and if the Circle has a profound impact on some of the members, it is as nothing compared to the impact being in Chautauqua has. The speakers and preachers are distinguished and eloquent, including General Garfield (although this is election year 1880). Strangely, out of all those respectable members, the first two people to make a life-changing, eternity-changing decision are the least likely.
The characters are realistically portrayed and some of them show unlikeable qualities, but they also show the reality of the social divide of the time, and I became immersed in their stories. There are quite a number of humorous moments as well as some poignant ones, adding up to a very good story. As with all Mrs Alden’s books, her emphasis is on the gospel, and through her stories, she has ministered to an untold number of people; she is a missionary/evangelist through her novels, and I think this novel is possibly one of her best.
Footnote: digitisation has caused a problem with some words and names, the most common one seeming to be changing Fenton to Kenton (just saying).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews