DADDY LONG LEGS - Jean Webster

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Résumé :
At 18 years old, Jerusha Abbott is the eldest child stuck in an orphanage with every other kid's responsibility on her shoulders. Her life takes a pivotal turn when an unnamed man, who is a trustee of the orphanage, pays for her college education being impressed by one of her essays. He decides to pay a handsome amount to her at regular intervals in return for letters written to him by Jerusha without any expectation of a response. The reader gets a visual of how Jerusha's life unfolds as she steps into a new phase of her life. She addresses him as daddy long legs for she catches a glimpse of his (long) legs as he leaves the orphanage one day. Gripping till the last page where the identity of the benefactor is revealed, this epistolary comingof- age classic is relatable to the extent that the reader can live Jerusha's life through her letters. Her relationship with the anonymous benefactor as she grows, learns, explores and thrives, makes the reader an active yet a passive participant in her story.

Biographie:
Alice Jane Chandler Webster (July 24, 1876-June 11, 1916), an American author whose works include Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy, used the pen name, Jean Webster. Her most well-known works include young female protagonists who are engaging and likable and who mature intellectually, ethically, and socially. Her books also contain just the right amount of humor, snappy dialogue, and subtly cutting social criticism to appeal to modern readers. The birthplace of Alice Jane Chandler Webster is Fredonia, New York. She was the oldest child born to Charles Luther Webster and Annie Moffet Webster. With her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all sharing a home, she spent her early years in a strongly matriarchal and activist environment. Her great-grandmother advocated for temperance, and her grandmother for women's suffrage and racial equality. Mark Twain's mother was his niece, and Alice's father was the business manager of the 1884-founded Charles L. Webster & Company, which later published many of Mark Twain's works. The company started out well, and when Alice was five, the family moved to a sizable brownstone in New York, along with a vacation home on Long Island. However, the publishing house encountered problems, and things with Mark Twain got worse and worse....