The Indiscreet Letter — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott was a nationally recognized American author. She was a frequent contributor to The Ladies' Home Journal. She attended Radcliffe College, and then worked as a secretary and teacher at Lowell State Normal School. She went on to publish seventy-five short stories and fourteen romantic novels. Her romantic fiction focused on young women and was described as "charming" by readers of the day. Her work was popular in the 1910s and 1920s. An excerpt reads, "There was nothing dressy, however, about the Young Electrician. From his huge cowhide boots to the lead smouch that ran from his rough, square chin to the very edge of his astonishingly blond curls, he was one delicious mess of toil and old clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show."