The Village Watch-Tower | Page 3

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Pages 1-150 typed by R. McGowan & pages 151-218 scanned by E. P.
McGowan

The Village Watch-Tower by Kate Douglas Wiggin

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EDITION

These days the name of Kate Douglas Wiggin is virtually unknown.
But if one mentions the title "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,"
recognition (at least in America) is instant. Everyone has heard of
Rebecca; her story has been in print continuously since it was first
published in 1903. It is certainly Mrs. Wiggin's most famous book, and

the only one of her many books that is still in print. Everything else she
wrote has slipped into complete obscurity. Occasionally in an antique
shop, one may still find a copy of her immensely popular seasonal book,
"The Birds' Christmas Carol", but that is about the extent of what is
readily available, even second-hand.
The Birds' Christas Carol is available as our Etext #721, Nov. 1996.
In 1904, Jack London wrote (from Manchuria!) to say that Rebecca had
won his heart. ("She is real," he wrote, "she lives; she has given me
many regrets, but I love her.") Some eighty years later I happened to
pick up and read "Rebecca" for the first time. The book was so
thoroughly enjoyable that when I had finished it, I began at once a
search for other works by the same author-- especially for a sequel to
"Rebecca", which seemed practically to demand one. There was never
a sequel written, but "The New Chronicles of Rebecca" was published
in 1907, and contained some further chapters in the life of its heroine. I
had to be satisfied with that, for the time being. Then, well over a year
after jotting down Mrs. Wiggin's name on my list of authors to
"purchase on sight", I finally ran across a copy of "The Village
Watch-Tower"; and it was not even a book of which I had heard. It was
first published in 1895 by Houghton, who published much of her other
work at the time, and apparently was never published again. Shortly
thereafter I found a copy of her autobiography.
Kate Douglas Wiggin (nee Smith) was born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, on September 28, 1856. She was raised for the most-part
in Maine, which forms a backdrop to much of her fiction. She moved to
California in the 1870s, and became involved in the "free kindergarten"
movement. She opened the Silver Street Free Kindergarten in San
Francisco, the first free kindergarten in California, and there she
worked until the late 1880s (meantime opening her own training school
for teachers). Her first husband, Samuel Wiggin, died in 1889. By then
famous, she returned to New York and Maine. She moved in
international social circles, lecturing and giving readings from her work.
In 1895 she married for the second time (to George Riggs).
At her home in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate and Marin

County, she wrote her first book, "The Birds' Christmas Carol", to raise
money for her school. The book also proved to be her means of
entrance into publishing, translation, and travel in elite circles
throughout Europe. The book was republished many times thereafter,
and translated into several languages. In addition to factual and
educational works (undertaken together with her sister, Nora Archibald
Smith) she also wrote a number of other popular novels in the early
years of the 20th century, including "Rebecca", and "The Story of
Waitstill Baxter" (1913). She died in 1923, on August 23, at
Harrow-on-Hill, England.
Beverly Seaton observed, in "American Women Writers", that Mrs.
Wiggin was "a popular writer who expressed what her contemporaries
themselves thought of as 'real life'" (p. 413). "The Village
Watch-Tower" I think is a perfect example of that observation; it
captures vividly a few frozen moments of rural America, right at the
twilight of the 19th century. Most of it was written in the village of
Quillcote, Maine, her childhood home--and certainly the model for the
village of these stories.
No attempt has been made to edit