Authors and Books
for Children

Pollyanna Parables: Eleanor H. Porter Etexts

Everyone knows what it means to be called a Pollyanna. And if you don't, just look in your Merriam Webster dictionary--a Pollyanna is "a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything" (10th edition). The word is so firmly established that it's a little startling to realize the far-reaching influence of Eleanor H. Porter's charming 1913 novel of an optimistic orphan who plays the Glad Game.

Pollyanna was an instant best-seller--by 1920, there had been forty-seven printings. Porter's sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up also reached the best-seller lists.


By 1917, then-ingenue Helen Hayes was trodding the Broadway boards as Pollyanna Whittier, the Glad Girl, in a stage adaptation, and in 1920, America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, starred in a silent film version--the first of several movie adaptations, with the most famous being the 1960 Walt Disney film starring Hayley Mills in the title role. In 1989, TV even offered a musical version, Polly, with an all-black cast headed by Keshia Knight Pulliam (little Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show). Collectible Pollyanna dolls and games have graced store shelves.

In fact, Pollyanna was popular enough to spawn twelve additional stories--sometimes called the Glad Books--from three other authors (Virginia May Moffitt, Harriett Lummis Smith, and Elizabeth Borton) after Porter's death. Porter's two Pollyanna books are available as etexts.

Porter was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, on December 19, 1868. After studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, she launched a singing career. Married in 1892, she moved to Massachusetts and began writing short stories for women's magazines under the pseudonym Eleanor Stewart; her first of thirteen novels, Cross Currents, was published in 1907. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1920.

Though the success of Pollyanna was phenomenal, Eleanor H. Porter was no stranger to success; she had in 1911 written another best-seller, Miss Billy, which, like Pollyanna, also featured an orphaned heroine going to live with unknown relatives. Two additional Miss Billy stories followed; all three are available on the Web.

Among her other novels online are Just David (yet another orphan story), Mary Marie (about a child of divorced parents), and Dawn (about a man who goes blind).

Pollyanna
#1 Pollyanna, 1913
#2 Pollyanna Grows Up, 1914

Miss Billy
Miss Billy, 1911
Miss Billy's Decision, 1912
Miss Billy--Married, 1914

Additional books on the Web by Eleanor H. Porter
Just David, 1916
Oh, Money! Money!, 1918
Dawn (also known as Keith's Dark Tower), 1919
Across the Years/i>, 1919
Mary Marie, 1920