The story that was “not quite in our tone” but that so impressed Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was What Happened to Alanna. On its publication S. S. McClure wrote to Mrs. Norris asking for her next work. She replied, giving him the date on which What Happened to Alanna had been submitted to McClure’s Magazine and the date on which it had been returned to her.

Her next six stories appeared in McClure’s. After that it seemed to the casual observer as if they were everywhere. In one month Mrs. Norris was on five tables of contents.

And then the Delineator offered a prize for a story of not more than 3,000 words. Mrs. Norris began one, and when she saw that it would run to 10,000 words, she laid it aside and wrote another. So the Delineator lost and the American Magazine gained Mother. On the story’s appearance five publishers asked Mrs. Norris to enlarge it sufficiently to make a book.

Enlarging short stories into novels is a ticklish business. Successes are few. Mrs. Norris added 20,000 words to her short story. How well she did it is evidenced by the dozens of editions through which the book has run and more remarkably by the fact that Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, paid a high price for the privilege of running the novel as a serial after its publication as a book. This is apparently a unique instance.

Mother was followed by The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne, the story of a great-hearted woman who brought her fresh and honest ideals into the heart of a narrow Western city. Those who read it may excusably gasp to hear that it was written in six weeks on an order from the Woman’s Home Companion. Poor Dear Margaret Kirby, collected short stories, was the third book, appearing in the spring of 1913. The Treasure had had serial publication in the Saturday Evening Post. Saturday’s Child preceded it. And then Mrs. Norris made her first great success with a full length novel which many will consider the biggest book she has done. It was The Story of Julia Page, the first of three novels which have been called Mrs. Norris’s trilogy of American womanhood. The others are The Heart of Rachael and Martie, the Unconquered. Between these last two appeared her short novel, Undertow, dealing with two young married spendthrifts. Josselyn’s Wife, “the story of a woman’s faith,” tells of a sweet, simple girl, Ellen Latimer, transported by a whirlwind marriage to Gibbs Josselyn from the humdrum existence of a small country town to the luxuries of the wealthy social life of New York. There is a time when the young second wife of Gibbs Josselyn’s father threatens to break up the happiness of the younger Josselyn and Ellen, for Gibbs succumbs readily to her undeniable fascination. Then comes the crash. Through the long agony of a murder trial it is the wife he has neglected who alone upholds him. It is her faith that wins and that brings him at last to an understanding of his egotistical folly.

Mrs. Norris is not yet at the height and fullness of her powers, as well as can be judged contemporaneously. It is easy enough to look back on the completed work of a writer’s lifetime and say, “Here he reached his apex, here he began to decline, here he rose again for an hour.” But to estimate the present and relate it tentatively to the future is very much harder. Mother was one “peak” in the graph of Mrs. Norris’s progress, The Story of Julia Page was another and a higher, Josselyn’s Wife is at least as high. There is every prospect that in the active and happy years we may hope are ahead of her, Kathleen Norris will excel the impressive novels she has already given us.

Books by Kathleen Norris

Mother, 1911.
The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne, 1912.
Poor Dear Margaret Kirby, 1913.
Saturday’s Child, 1914.
The Treasure, 1915.
The Story of Julia Page, 1915.
The Heart of Rachael, 1916.
Undertow, 1917.
Martie, the Unconquered, 1917.
Josselyn’s Wife, 1918.
Sisters, 1919.
Harriet and the Piper, 1920.
The Beloved Woman, 1921.
Lucretia Lombard, 1922.
Certain People of Importance, 1922.

These novels by Mrs. Norris are published by Doubleday, Page & Company, New York.