Pollyanna

by Eleanor H. Porter

Overview

Pollyanna Whittier, an eleven-year-old orphan who goes to live in the fictional town of Beldingsville, Vermont, with her wealthy but stern and cold spinster Aunt Polly, who does not want to take in Pollyanna but feels it is her duty to her late sister.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781078799447
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	05/03/2020
Series:	Pollyanna , #1
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	7 - 9 Years

About the Author

Eleanor Emily Hodgman was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, on December 19, 1868, the daughter of Llewella French (née Woolson) and Francis Fletcher Hodgman. She was trained as a singer, attending the New England Conservatory for several years. In 1892 she married John Lyman Porter and relocated to Massachusetts, after which she began writing and publishing her short stories and, later, novels. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1920, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Pollyanna is considered a classic of children's literature. The book's success led to Porter soon writing a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, known as "Glad Books", were later published, most of them written by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith. Further sequels followed, including Pollyanna Plays the Game by Colleen L. Reece, published in 1997. Due to the book's fame, "Pollyanna" has become a byword for someone who – like the title character – has an unfailingly optimistic outlook; a subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle. Despite the current common use of the term to mean 'excessively cheerful', Pollyanna and her father played the glad game as a method of coping with the real difficulties and sorrows that, along with luck and joy, shape every life.