Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
First edition
|
|
| Author |
L. Frank Baum (as "Edith Van Dyne") |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Emile A. Nelson |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre |
Young adult fiction Detective fiction Satire Comedy |
| Publisher | Reilly & Britton |
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Publication date
|
1908 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 306 pp. |
| Preceded by | Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad |
| Followed by | Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work |
Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville is a 1908 young adult novel written by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. It is the third volume in "the successful Aunt Jane Series," following Aunt Jane's Nieces and Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad. These books for adolescent girls constituted the second greatest success of Baum's literary career, after the Oz books. Like the other books in the series, the Millville volume was released under the pen name "Edith Van Dyne," one of Baum's multiple pseudonyms.
Novels for adolescent readers can take many specific forms: after the family inheritance drama of Aunt Jane's Nieces and the travel adventure of Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad, Baum cast his third book as a small-town drama with a bucolic atmosphere, in which a traditional society is contrasted with the world of the nouveau-riche rising business class. In this, the book resembles Baum's earlier novel Annabel (1906). In the view of Baum biographer Katharine Rogers, "the substance" of the Millville book "is humor at the expense of the local yokels."
The novel has other aspects too, however. Baum would spend much of the last decade of his writing career working in the girl-detective vein — in his books The Daring Twins and Phoebe Daring (1911–12) and in the first five books of the Mary Louise series (1916–20). Yet he made his first ventures in the genre in some of the Aunt Jane books, notably here in the third book of the series. His handling of the detective genre here is satiric, though; the three cousins are influenced in their detecting effort by the novels they have read – and their efforts are soon shown to be misguided and erroneous. (The plot does eventually resolve itself as something of a detective story, as the Merrick clan solves a mystery involving the fate of key supporting characters. The plot features a locked cabinet with a secret compartment – with another secret compartment inside that.)
Baum spreads his gentle and genial satire to other targets too, even to the popular fiction of his era. One character is a habitual reader of the "paper-covered novels" of the day, including one specific title, The Angel Maniac's Revenge.
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Wikipedia