“ Her success as an author is said by some to be the result of her powers of description; others assert that it is her naturalness, her clear, concise English and her faculty to hold the reader's sympathy from the beginning to the end; while others attribute it to the fact that mothers are willing their young daughters should read her books, knowing there is nothing in them but what is pure and elevating. ”

“ As an author she has had a most happy career, with none of the trials which fall to the lot of so many writers, and her publishers have always been her friends. Appleton published her first book. G. W. Carleton has been her publisher for the past twenty years, but has recently sold out to the partner, Mr. Dillingham, who now has all her books. An estimate and comparison from the statistics of a wholesale bookstore, which supplies the trade of the upper half of the Mississippi Valley, show that, next to K. P. Roe's works, Mrs. Holmes' novels are the most popular of any American author. ”