The Peterkin Papers New York R

Before Amelia Bedelia and the Stupids there were the Peterkins. The Peterkin Papers collects all of Lucretia Hale’s beloved tales of a thoroughly silly family.

The Peterkin Papers record the antics of the most memorably and hopelessly bumbling of respectable American families. Confronted by the endless challenges of daily life, the Peterkins rise to every occasion with misguided aplomb: they sit out in the sun for hours and fail to go for a ride because they’ve forgotten to unhitch the horse, they play the piano from the porch through the parlor window because the movers left the keyboard turned that way, they decide to raise the ceiling to accommodate a too-tall Christmas tree. Only the timely intervention of their great and good friend, the Lady from Philadelphia, can be counted on to get the Peterkins out of their latest scrape.

A classic of American children’s literature and a masterpiece of deadpan drollery, The Peterkin Papers restore our astonishment at the ordinary, finding a rich vein of humor and happy surprise in the mere fact of our surviving the trivialities and tribulations of family life.

LUCRETIA P. HALE (1820-1900) is best known as the author of a series of stories about a family named Peterkin, the first of which appeared in 1867 in the magazine Our Young Folks (later St. Nicholas Magazine). The series continued for nine years, and made the Peterkins a household name. In addition to writing, Hale helped her brother Edward edit the Old and New Magazine from 1870 to 1875. She was concerned with education and in 1874 was one of the first six women elected to the Boston School Committee, where she served two terms. Her last book, The New Harry and Lucy, appeared in 1892.