When was daddy long legs written

That is, until a rich trustee reads an essay written by Judy, and it makes him laugh. He offers to send her to college to become a writer, on the condition that she writes him regular letters to keep him up to date with events. Judy has no idea whom her generous benefactor actually is. Three things she knows:. He never answers any of her letters - but seems somehow always to be present in her life This extremely funny Cinderella story follows Judy through her college years, as she tries to fit in with her rich friends The story is told through her letters to 'Dear Daddy Long Legs'.

The review of this Book prepared by Hannah Warnaar. When Jerusha Abbott finds out that a mysterious benefactor is going to send her to college so she can become a writer, she couldn't be more surprised. After all, who would take interest in someone who has spent her entire life in an orphanage? A very strange man, it seems. He doesn't want her to know who he is, he doesn't want to have any contact with her. I remember feeling the same amount of lightheartedness, because the ending is so touching.

And now that it's over, I look wistfully like this: Well not as cute as that, but teary eyed since my longing for the cartoon is somehow eased, but still there. Daddy-Long-Legs is a sweet tale, not just of romance, but also how an orphan girl strives and blends in the normal world. Judy is a heroine that is very admirable and whom everyone must set an example of.

She is strong and hardworking. And her roots never interfered with her dreams, and she somehow made it an inspiration to aim higher. And also, she is not perfect, and as she constantly points out, she is just a girl of whom all of us could relate to. But somehow, I couldn't get enough of this, so, off to get a copy of the sequel Dear Enemy.

But who is Daddy-Long-Legs? Read to find out :D View all 16 comments. Joudy abott my old friend. View all 4 comments. You should read this review if: 1. Okay, or: 3. Please read this review so I can convince you otherwise. Thank you. There is something to be said for not having read the classics as a kid — provided, of course, you s You should read this review if: 1.

I myself missed out on To Kill A Mockingbird until I was in my 40s, because everybody only talked about the important moral issues it discusses, and nobody mentioned how hard its writing kicks arse.

So: Daddy-Long-Legs is an absolute delight. I figured it would be cute and, given how long ago it was written, probably pretty sappy. I can deal with a little sap.

Sometimes I even like it. But the young narrator, Jerusha Abbott, is mercilessly sharp and laugh-out-loud funny. Put it to you this way: My son decided to read this after he kept cracking up from all the bits I read out loud to him at the breakfast table. Jerusha is given a scholarship to college thanks to her excellent writing. The essay that snagged her this scholarship was a bitterly funny piece about the orphanage.

This book was the perfect antidote. I recently reread The Catcher in the Rye. Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy that roomed right next to me. Big deal. Way to be random, Deborah. We had tombstone for dessert milk and gelatin flavored with vanilla. We were kept in chapel twenty minutes later than usual to listen to a speech about womanly women. She has just gone. You should read Daddy-Long-Legs and decide for yourself.

This made for a wonderful read aloud! We love orphan stories and this was no exception! Jerusha Abbot is an 18 yr old orphan who attracts the attention of a trustee by writing a subversive essay. He offers to pay for her education to become a writer on the condition that she writes to him about her education.

The rest of this story is told through Judy's letters to her trustee, whom she names Daddy Long Legs, as this is the only thing she can remember about him. The letters are funny and enthusias This made for a wonderful read aloud! The letters are funny and enthusiastic, the reader realises something before Judy does which makes for all the more amusing reading. What really floored me after reading this positive and uplifting book was that the author died two days after childbirth, I hope her daughter found some message in this orphan story, I hope she did, and I'm sure it was a positive one.

View all 28 comments. Jun 20, Mariel rated it liked it Recommends it for: it's easy when you're big in Iran. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It's probably one of those sad things about me that I take rootless interest in people I don't know and do a whole lot of aimless wondering.

It feels creepy on bad days. Daddy Long Legs is weird for me 'cause it felt both not creepy and totally creepy. It must have been delicious for "Daddy" to get letters from someone who didn't know who she was writing to, be privy to hopes and desires and not have to figure his own out.

Too bad the sense that he knew them too well was creepy. He had eight l It's probably one of those sad things about me that I take rootless interest in people I don't know and do a whole lot of aimless wondering.

He had eight legs and none to hold with. He was thinking with another appendage anyway. She's right! It is interesting to me that things that were loved and cast aside will be still loved somewhere else. When I was a teenager I had friends who belonged to ultra strict families religious grounds. No freedom of choice. I used to go off into reveries about what I'd survive on if I were them. I'd also take it further back and decide what I'd have been reading if I lived in another time and country presuming I was lucky enough to be able to read.

I never want to be female in "what ifs" in other countries and times. My favorite part of Daddy Long Legs is reading about how they survived on what they had then! She didn't have them before then. I've been thinking about Iranian readers of Jean Websters books. I used to email a Malay girl a few years back and she'd tell me about movies she had to watch in secret. Sometimes I'd disappoint her because I didn't value stuff like family honor.

Are Websters books popular because they approach the line of freedom and step back behind firm lines of society and family? I would mentally shelve Webster under the heading of "Safe to have". Okay, I had been on a goodreads "diet" of no pictures in reviews. Today I am bingeing and tomorrow I will throw up all over a new review. It's all for the sake of the orphans. Daddy Long Legs is cozy and warm like inside the belly of a taun taun.

It would keep you warm and it also smells kinda off, even rotten at times. Not fishy but taun taun-y. I have that taun taun with the figures! This is a picture I pulled off google images. I'm too lazy to do my own reenactment. Since I am lazy this does not count anyway. She calls him daddy. The nick name is cute daddy long legs 'cause his shadow looked spidery and long legged. It wouldn't be creepy if she didn't ask if she should still call him daddy in the last letter, now that they are engaged.

What if he says yes?! I know a guy who calls his wife "Mama". So not hot. Did he choose to sponsor her for college as grooming for future wifedom? That's gross. That's what was creepy to me. She's supposed to become a writer. Jerusha doesn't know what she wants. Sure, parents pressure their kids to be doctors or something. If he was paying for her to attend med school she'd dump him as soon as she graduated. What is this vicarious living slash wife hunting?

Don't know if I like it It's lucky for her that she didn't figure it out at first I forgave her because she grew up in an orphan asylum. Once she begins reading voraciously it is more troubling that her imagination couldn't do the numbers because she felt so grateful to the "trustee" this was creepy because inmates with special benefits are called this now for her opportunities.

It's a trap! Picture your favorite Admiral Ackbar picture here. He smells fishy. His condition is that she write letters to him, letters he'll presumably never read, as well as standard great grades stuff. The relief to finally talk was the good part. The charm of Daddy Long Legs are the confidences that she makes in those letters.

I liked how the girl tried to catch up to all the girls her own age, reading books she missed out on, the newness of academia and bigger social circles that can be taken for granted by those who have them. The weaker part is that it is the "safe" and "allowed to have". I'm not begrudging anyone who has to have that. This is with me as a reader in mind. I wonder what other people want even as I'm hopeless at reading for anyone else. The downside is that it is one sided. When the world should have widened it cut off.

Daddy Long Legs ends too soon and footnotes the growing up past the newness. Sometimes people tell themselves things.

Jerusha tells herself she's over her past of being an orphan. She's not, it made her who she was. The telling and back and forth on that felt like a nervous tic, something to do with your hands when nervous, that one cannot disguise. Other things, being "grateful" and learning to smile through tedium was telling. Who wants to read a self help book? Letters should be like talking to yourself and to someone you care about at the same time.

Mantras are not going to keep The Beatles from splitting up. Yeah, yeah it was written eons ago. She marries a bossy man who "knows what's best" for her. If I were her friend getting letters about this guy I'd not worry about her because she knows when she's taken advantage of and told to be grateful like the mistress of the asylum she tries to scorn with tongue and cheek but cannot help biting the insides of her cheeks not to scream.

I didn't fall in love with her. I'd have written back and asked questions. Maybe then. Can you believe that I used to be a letter writer? Shared correspondence is a good place for sad wonderers who want to know. Daddy waited too long to write letters he does eventually, as Jervis. We don't get to read them. Online Learning. Social Sciences. Legal Studies. Political Science. Welcome to Owlcation. Related Articles. By Eric Caunca. By Doug West. By Rupert Taylor. By Linda Crampton.

By Kelley Marks. By Andrew Spacey. By Darla Sue Dollman. By Glen Rix. By Jule Romans. By precy anza. By Alianess Benny Njuguna. See More. And old. A hundred years or so. It stands on the top of a hill and looks way off over miles of green meadows to another line of hills. That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave.

The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down. The people are Mr. Semple and a hired girl and two hired men. The hired people eat in the kitchen, and the Semples and Judy in the dining-room. We had ham and eggs and biscuits and honey and jelly-cake and pie and pickles and cheese 94 and tea for supper—and a great deal of conversation.

I have never been so entertaining in my life; everything I say appears to be funny. The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed, but the one that I occupy. We rise at five. Did you ever know such fun? You and the 95 Good Lord give me more than I deserve. I must be a very, very, very good person to pay. You should hear the frogs sing and the little pigs squeal—and you should see the new moon!

I saw it over my right shoulder. How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow? I am awfully curious to know. For listen to this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm, but now he has given it to Mrs.

Semple who was his old nurse. Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? Since she discovered that I know him, I have risen very much in her opinion.

Knowing a member of the Pendleton family is the best introduction one can have at 97 Lock Willow. And the cream of the whole family is Master Jervie—I am pleased to say that Julia belongs to an inferior branch. The farm gets more and more entertaining. I rode on a hay wagon yesterday. We have three big pigs and nine little piglets, and you should see them eat. They are pigs!

You must be mad to live in a city when you might live on a farm. It is my daily business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee, Mrs. It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off that very same beam and scratched this very same knee.

The scenery around here is perfectly beautiful. We churn twice a week; and we keep the cream in the spring house which is made of stone with the brook running underneath. He looks like this—you can see how appropriate the name is.

A real true Daddy-Long-Legs! I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the window. They always remind me of you. We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Center to church. A nice, sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans, and the only sound aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts in the trees outside. Their God whom they have inherited intact from their remote Puritan ancestors is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful, bigoted Person.

I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to their theory. They are better than their own God. I told them so—and they are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous—and I think they are! Amasai hired man in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskin gloves, very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie hired girl in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress and her hair curled as tight as it will curl.

Amasai spent all the morning washing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church ostensibly to cook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress. In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to settle down to a book which I found in the attic. It looks well read—the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent!

Also in a corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some bows and arrows. Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin to believe he really lives—not a grown man with a silk hat and walking stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairs with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is always asking for cookies.

And getting them, too, if I know Mrs. He seems to have been an adventurous little soul—and brave and truthful. It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup the spotted cow with one horn, Mother of Lesbia has done a disgraceful thing. She got into the orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate and ate until they went to her head.

For two days she has been perfectly dead drunk! Did you ever hear anything so scandalous? Indians in the first chapter and highwaymen in the second. I hold my breath. What can the third contain? I was weighed yesterday on the flour scales in the general store at the Corners. Let me recommend Lock Willow as a health resort. Behold me—a Sophomore! I came up last Friday, sorry to leave Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It is a pleasant sensation to come back to something familiar.

I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world—as though I really belonged in it and had not just crept in on sufferance. And now, Daddy, listen to this. Whom do you think I am rooming with?

We have a study and three little bedrooms— voila! Anyway, here we are. This is a democratic country. Sallie is running for class president, and unless all signs fail, she is going to be elected. Such an atmosphere of intrigue—you should see what politicians we are! I am beginning chemistry, a most unusual study. But I will say that my high-school preparation was not very adequate. She went abroad with her parents when she was a child, and spent three years in a convent school.

You can imagine how bright she is compared with the rest of us—irregular verbs are mere playthings. I wish my parents had chucked me into a French convent when I was little instead of a foundling asylum. Because then maybe I should never have known you. Good-by, Daddy. I must call on Harriet Martin now, and, having discussed the chemical situation, casually drop a few thoughts on the subject of our next president. Supposing the swimming tank in the gymnasium were filled full of lemon jelly, could a person trying to swim manage to keep on top or would he sink?

We were having lemon jelly for dessert when the question came up. Sallie thinks that she could swim in it, but I am perfectly sure that the best swimmer in the world would sink. What shape are the rooms in an octagon house? Suppose there were a great big hollow sphere made of looking-glass and you were sitting inside. Where would it stop reflecting your face and begin reflecting your back? The more one thinks about this problem, the more puzzling it becomes.

You can see with what deep philosophical reflection we engage our leisure! Did I ever tell you about the election? It happened three weeks ago, but so fast do we live, that three weeks is ancient history.

We beat the Freshmen at basket ball yesterday. Sallie has invited me to spend the Christmas vacation with her. She lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. I shall love to go. But the McBrides have a houseful of children anyway two or three and a mother and father and grandmother, and an Angora cat.

Packing your trunk and going away is more fun than staying behind. I am terribly excited at the prospect. Seventh hour—I must run to rehearsal. A prince in a tower with a velvet tunic and yellow curls. Do you want to know what I look like? The light one who is laughing is Sallie, and the tall one with her nose in the air is Julia, and the little one with the hair blowing across her face is Judy—she is really more beautiful than that, but the sun was in her eyes.

My Christmas present this year is from Daddy-Long-Legs; my family just sent love. She lives in a big old-fashioned brick house with white trimmings set back from the street—exactly the kind of house that I used to look at so curiously when I was in the John Grier Home, and wonder what it could be like inside.

I never expected to see with my own eyes—but here I am! Everything is so comfortable and restful and homelike; I walk from room to room and drink in the furnishings. It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in; with shadowy nooks for hide and seek, and open fireplaces for pop-corn, and an attic to romp in on rainy days, and slippery banisters with a comfortable flat knob at the bottom, and a great big sunny kitchen, and a nice fat, sunny cook who has lived in the family thirteen years and always saves out a piece of dough for the children to bake.

Just the sight of such a house makes you want to be a child all over again. And as for families! I never dreamed they could be so nice. Sallie has a father and mother and grandmother, and the sweetest three-year-old baby sister all over curls, and a medium-sized brother who always forgets to wipe his feet, and a big, good-looking brother named Jimmie, who is a junior at Princeton.

It was in the long packing-room which was decorated with evergreens and holly. Dear me, Daddy, but it was a funny sensation! I felt as benevolent as a Trustee of the John Grier Home. I had a new white evening gown your Christmas present—many thanks and long white gloves and white satin slippers. The only drawback to my perfect, utter, absolute happiness was the fact that Mrs. Tell her about it, please, the next time you visit the J.

We started to walk to town to-day, but mercy! I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain. There are advantages you see about rooming with Julia. Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited over a train in order to take tea in the study. And an awful lot of trouble we had getting permission. And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.

Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches. He helped make them and then ate four. I told him that I had spent last summer at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens. All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit—and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.

He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry—and they do! Amasai caught a big, fat, gray one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one Master Jervie caught when he was a little boy. I mean it figuratively. There are such a lot of possibilities. Do you know about that one scandalous blot in my career—the time I ran away from the asylum because they punished me for stealing cookies?

But really, Daddy, what could you expect? I only ran four miles. They caught me and brought me back; and every day for a week I was tied, like a naughty puppy, to a stake in the back yard while the other children were out at recess. Oh, dear! Would it be very improper to have it made into a bath robe?

My old one shrank when it was washed. You can see with what nicety we have to trim our sails between chemistry and history. I like the historical method best. It gives a feeling of security and restfulness to the history recitation, that is entirely lacking in chemistry. Sixth-hour bell—I must go to the laboratory and look into a little matter of acids and salts and alkalis. There is a March wind blowing, and the sky is filled with heavy, black moving clouds. The crows in the pine trees are making such a clamor!

You want to close your books and be off over the hills to race with the wind. The fox composed of three girls and a bushel or so of confetti started half an hour before the twenty-seven hunters. I was one of the twenty-seven; eight dropped by the wayside; we ended nineteen. The trail led over a hill, through a cornfield, and into a swamp where we had to leap lightly from hummock to hummock. Of course half of us went in ankle deep.

We kept losing the trail, and wasted twenty-five minutes over that swamp. Then up a hill through some woods and in at a barn window! The barn doors were all locked and the window was up high and pretty small. The fox thought he had us there, but we fooled him. Then straight away over two miles of rolling meadow, and awfully hard to follow, for the confetti was getting sparse. The rule is that it must be at the most six feet apart, but they were the longest six feet I ever saw.

Both sides insist that they won. Because we caught them before they got back to the campus. Anyway, all nineteen of us settled like locusts over the furniture and clamored for honey. Then we all cut evening chapel, the state of our boots being enough of an excuse. I never told you about examinations. I passed everything with the utmost ease—I know the secret now, and am never going to flunk again. I have a beautiful play that I invented a long time ago when I first learned to read.

I keep Hamlet amused all the time, and pet him and scold him and make him wrap up his throat when he has a cold. The King and Queen are both dead—an accident at sea; no funeral necessary—so Hamlet and I are ruling in Denmark without any bother. We have the kingdom working beautifully. He takes care of the governing, and I look after the charities. I have just founded some first-class orphan asylums.

If you or any of the other Trustees would like to visit them, I shall be pleased to show you through. I think you might find a great many helpful suggestions. Listen to what has happened. Jerusha Abbott has won the short-story contest a twenty-five dollar prize that the Monthly holds every year.

And she a Sophomore! The contestants are mostly Seniors. Maybe I am going to be an author after all. I am going to be Celia, own cousin to Rosalind. Julia is going to stay at home with her family, but Sallie and I are going to stop at the Martha Washington Hotel. Did you ever hear of anything so exciting? We studied it for four weeks in Shakespeare class and I know it by heart.

I saw a street car conductor to-day with one brown eye and one blue. Worcester is nothing to it. Do you mean to tell me that you actually live in all that confusion? And the people?

And the shops? I never saw such lovely things as there are in the windows. It makes you want to devote your life to wearing clothes. Sallie and Julia and I went shopping together Saturday morning. Julia went into the very most gorgeous place I ever saw, white and gold walls and blue carpets and blue silk curtains and gilt chairs. A perfectly beautiful lady with yellow hair and a long black silk trailing gown came to meet us with a welcoming smile.

I thought we were paying a social call, and started to shake hands, but it seems we were only buying hats—at least Julia was. She sat down in front of a mirror and tried on a dozen, each lovelier than the last, and bought the two loveliest of all.

I ate my fish with the wrong fork, but the waiter very kindly gave me another so that nobody noticed. And after luncheon we went to the theater—it was dazzling, marvelous, unbelievable—I dream about it every night.

It would be an awfully embarrassing mistake if I picked out the wrong one. We came back Saturday night and had our dinner in the train, at little tables with pink lamps and negro waiters.

I never heard of meals being served in trains before, and I inadvertently said so. I used to squirm whenever people looked at me. I felt as though they saw right through my sham new clothes to the checked ginghams underneath. Sufficient unto yesterday is the evil thereof. I forgot to tell you about our flowers. Master Jervie gave us each a big bunch of violets and lilies-of-the-valley. Thank you very much, but I do not feel that I can keep it. My allowance is sufficient to afford all of the hats that I need.

And I would rather not accept any more charity than I have to. Will you please forgive me for the letter I wrote you yesterday? I just wanted to tell you that I am sorry I was so impolite about your check. I ought to have returned it very much more graciously.

But in any case, I had to return it. They can take things naturally from people. I have an awful habit of writing impulsively when I first think things, and then posting the letter beyond recall. But if I sometimes seem thoughtless and ungrateful, I never mean it.

In my heart I thank you always for the life and freedom and independence that you have given me. I feel like a made-up heroine in a story-book. Field Day last Saturday. It was a very spectacular occasion. First we had a parade of all the classes, with everybody dressed in white linen, the Seniors carrying blue and gold Japanese umbrellas, and the Juniors white and yellow banners.

Our class had crimson balloons—very fetching, especially as they were always getting loose and floating off—and the Freshmen wore green tissue-paper hats with long streamers. Also we had a band in blue uniforms hired from town.

Also about a dozen funny people, like clowns in a circus, to keep the spectators entertained between events. Julia was dressed as a fat country man with a linen duster and whiskers and baggy umbrella. Patsy Moriarty Patricia, really. Did you ever hear such a name?

Waves of laughter followed them the whole length of the course. Julia played the part extremely well. And what do you think? We both won! At least in something. We tried for the running broad jump and lost; but Sallie won the pole-vaulting seven feet three inches and I won the fifty-yard dash eight seconds. I was pretty panting at the end, but it was great fun, with the whole class waving balloons and cheering and yelling:. That, Daddy, is true fame. Then trotting back to the dressing tent and being rubbed down with alcohol and having a lemon to suck.

The Seniors won it this year, with seven events to their credit. The athletic association gave a dinner in the gymnasium to all of the winners. We had fried soft-shell crabs, and chocolate ice-cream molded in the shape of basket balls. And if so, did people talk that way? Their books, their lives, their spirit. Where did they get it? I understood exactly how she felt. Having known Mrs. Lippett, I could see Mr. We had plenty to eat and plenty to wear, sufficient water to wash in, and a furnace in the cellar.

But there was one deadly likeness. Our lives were absolutely monotonous and uneventful. Nothing nice ever happened, except ice-cream on Sundays, and even that was regular. In all the eighteen years I was there I only had one adventure—when the woodshed burned. We had to get up in the night and dress so as to be ready in case the house should catch.

But I never had one until Mrs.