23 January 2023: "When Robert Bonner told E.D.E.N. Southworth in 1878 that he had received letters from readers of the New York Ledger complaining that her fiction contained too many 'unimportant details,' Southworth could not hide her irritation, replying that there were 'half a million readers who being satisfied, say nothing' but that those who did complain probably did so because 'they are in a hurry to get to the secret mystery of the plot" (Kelley 220).
Love this little bit of snark from Southworth, who realizes that people are more likely to share complaints than compliments, even 140+ years ago.
Work Cited
Kelley, Mary. Public Woman, Private Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America. U of North Carolina P, 2017.
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