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holds about the same position among our female prose writers that Cooper holds among American novelists. She was the first of her class whose writings became generally known, and the eminence universally conceded to her on account of priority, has been almost as generally granted on other grounds. Amid the throng of new competitors for public favour, who have entered the arena within the last few years, there is not one, probably, whose admirers would care to disturb the well-earned laurels of the author of “Redwood” and “Hope Leslie.”

Miss Sedgwick is a native, and has been much of her life, a resident of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Her father was the Hon. Theodore Sedgwick, of Stockbridge, who served his country with distinguished reputation in various stations, and particularly in the Congress of the United States, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and afterwards as Senator, and who, at the time of his death, was one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of his own State. Her brothers, Henry and Theodore, have both been distinguished as lawyers and as political writers. On the mother’s side, she is connected with the Dwight family, of whom her grandfather, Joseph Dwight, was a Brigadier-General in the Massachusetts Provincial forces, and actively engaged in the old French war of 1756.

Judge Sedgwick died in 1813, before his daughter had given any demonstration of her abilities as a writer. Her talents seem to have been from the first justly appreciated by her brothers, whose judicious encouragement is very gracefully acknowledged in the preface to the new edition of her works, commenced by Mr. Putnam, in 1819.

Miss Sedgwick’s first publication was “The New England Tale.” The author informs us in the preface, that the story was commenced as a religious tract, and that it gradually grew in her hands, beyond the proper limits of such a work. Finding this to be the case, she abandoned all design of publication, but finished the tale for her own amusement. Once 2