Andover author and feminist, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844 - 1911) was an early advocate of clothing reform for women, urging them to burn their corsets. Inspired by the Lawrence Pemberton Mill Tragedy of 1860, Phelps wrote this story based upon one of the actual workers Asenath S. Martin. It originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1868. Preface to this edition by Louise Sandberg, Special Collections, Lawrence Public Library, author of Lawrence in the Gilded Age. "The story is sentimental, but the events of that night are very real." Louise Sandberg