A Girl Of The Limberlost

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, A1909.

A Girl of the Limberlost, a novel by American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter, was published in August 1909. It is considered a classic of Indiana literature. It is the sequel to her earlier novel Freckles.The story takes place in Indiana, in and around the Limberlost Swamp. Even at the time, this impressive wetland region was being reduced by heavy logging, natural oil extraction and drainage for agriculture. (The swamp and forestland eventually ceased to exist, though projects since the 1990s have begun to restore a small part of it.)

Freckles, a nameless Irish waif when the story opens, moved by the power of a mighty love, takes hold of his life, performs deeds of heroism in his guardianship of the Limberlost timber leases, and at length, through the help of the woman he loves, comes into possession of his name and patrimony. Other characters, only a little less interesting, are McLean, a member of the Grand Rapids Lumber Co., Freckles' friend and boss; Lord O'More, who seeks a lost relative and finds him in the hero, and Black Jack, a handsome villian, whose thought of repentance comes too late.

"A Girl of the Limberlost" – Elnora Comstock, is an impoverished young woman who lives with her widowed mother, Katharine Comstock, on the edge of the Limberlost. Elnora faces cold neglect by her mother, a woman who feels ruined by the death of her husband, Robert Comstock, who drowned in quicksand in the swamp while Katharine gave birth to their daughter and could not come to his rescue. The Comstocks make money by selling eggs and other farm products, but Mrs. Comstock refuses to cut down a single tree in the forest, or to delve for oil, as the neighbors around them are doing. Elnora is just beginning high school and she is determined to earn an education, which her mother derides as useless. She has a valuable specimens box which her friend Freckles left in the swamp for her, and a desire to succeed in her enterprising scheme to gather and sell artifacts and moths from the Limberlost. Elnora is smart and witty, and she loves the outdoors; her heart aches for returned love and for support of her disapproving mother.

Odin's Library Classics is dedicated to bringing the world the best of humankind's literature from throughout the ages. Carefully selected, each work is unabridged from classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama.

Is it possible for two people who have grown up in completely different worlds to bridge the circumstances that divide them and create something better than either of them could ever have imagined? That's what the couple at the center of the dazzlingly romantic novel Laddie manage to pull off. A life-changing read, this is a novel whose lessons will stick with you long after you've finished the last page.

Mrs. Gene Stratton-Porter's novel is an illustration of the harmony and intimacy which does rightly exist between a man and a forest. In ' The Harvester ' she has not only dramatized, but proved the purifying and preservative forces that are always present and predominant in such a situation. This is why the story is so popular. It is utterly simple, nothing in the plot to appeal to morbid interest or curiosity. We really prefer what is good and clean in man and in nature if we can get it portrayed in fiction.

It is about this very bit of Indiana that Mrs. Porter has written her book,"Moths of the Limberlost," and it is the most unusual and interesting nature book ever imagined. It is a story of the "Moths" of the Limberlost which every reader of "A Girl of the Limberlost" will remember. Mrs. Porter pictures and describes the moth, hunted by Elnora, and in these chapters there is one oi the landscapes over which she hunted, much of the swamp, and the very bridge under which she was working to cut loose a cocoon when Philip came up the stream, fishing. There is also the log cabin in which Elnora lived. The text is just scientific enough to give the name and description of each moth, cocoon and caterpillar; the remainder is a fascinating record of personal experiences in finding or raising the specimens. This is the fully illustrated edition.