Miss Tommy, a Mediaeval Romance and in a House-Boat, a Journal — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik / Miss Mulock

Miss Tommy is a sweet and simple old-fashioned love-story, told in Mrs. Muloch-Craik's pleasant way, as if she and we were sitting by an open wood-fire of a stormy evening.

The story is told by Miss Decie Murray, a pretty, petted young girl of nineteen, of whose broken hearted over her soldier 'Charley,' from whom she has been ruthlessly separated by prudent parents.

The real heroine, however, is Miss Thomasina Trotter (known among her friends as Miss Tommy), an elderly maiden, as unselfishly useful and sweet as Anne Valery herself, and it is the hidden romance of her quiet heart, its patient tenderness and life-long constancy, which carries our interest to the end. The scene is laid chiefly in the quaint old town of Dover, some fifty years ago, and a pleasant breath of the sea, a distant sound of breaking waves and of military music.

Many of her readers, on closing the book, will doubtless fully agree with the author, who says in her Preface, “Perhaps in these days, when so many women disdain to be such, contemning domestic life, and by a curious contradiction at once imitating and despising men, it may be excusable to have painted one who was ‘only a woman,' nothing more.”

-- Excerpts of a review in Literary News, Volumes 5-6