Betsy-Tacy

The Betsy-Tacy books are a series of semi-autobiographical novels by American novelist and short-story writer Maud Hart Lovelace (1892-1980), which were originally published between 1940 and 1955 by the Thomas Y. Crowell Co. The books are now published by HarperCollins. The first four books were illustrated by Lois Lenski and the remainder by Vera Neville.

The series follows the adventures of heroine Betsy Ray, who is based closely on the author, and her friends and family. The first book, Betsy-Tacy, begins in 1897 on the eve of Betsy's fifth birthday, and the last book, Betsy's Wedding, ends in 1917 as the United States prepares to enter the First World War.

The series was inspired by the bedtime stories which Lovelace told to her daughter Merian about her own childhood. The popularity of Betsy-Tacy, published in 1940, led her to write three more books, Betsy-Tacy and Tib (1941), Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill (1942), and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown (1943). Although Lovelace intended to end the series after four books, her husband and daughter, who had found her high-school diaries, insisted that she use them to extend it through Betsy's high school career. This led to Heaven to Betsy (1945), Betsy in Spite of Herself (1946), Betsy was a Junior (1947), and Betsy and Joe (1948), each of which covers one high school year. Lovelace described these books, for which she drew heavily on her diaries and high-school scrapbooks, as particularly true to life. She wrote in 1964 that "the family life, customs, jokes, traditions are all true and the general pattern of the years is also accurate."

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