“Is Saul also among the prophets?”
The title-page, or outside cover, was copyrighted in 1845.
The Lowell Offering was welcomed with pleased surprise. It found subscribers all over the country. The North American Review, whose literary dictum was more autocratic than it is to-day, indorsed it, and expressed a fair opinion of its literary merit.
The editor, John G. Palfrey, said:—
“Many of the articles are such as to satisfy the reader at once, that if he has only taken up The Offering as a phenomenon, and not as what may bear criticism and reward perusal, he has but to own his error, and dismiss his condescension as soon as may be.”
Charles Dickens, in his “American Notes,” says:—
“They have got up among themselves a periodical, called The Lowell Offering, whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end. Of the merits of The Lowell Offering, as a literary production, I will only observe—putting out of sight the fact of the articles having been written by these girls after the arduous hours of the day—that it will compare advantageously with a great many English annuals.”
Harriet Martineau prompted a fine review of it in the London Athenæum, and a selection from Volumes I. and II. was published under her direction, called “Mind Among the Spindles.”
This book was issued first in London, in 1844, and republished in Boston in 1845, with an introduction by the English editor, Mr. Knight. In a letter to this gentleman, Miss Martineau said, “I had the opportunity of observing the invigorating effect of ‘Mind among the Spindles,’ in a life of labor. Twice the wages and half the toil would not have made the girls I saw happy and healthy, without that cultivation of mind which afforded them perpetual support, entertainment, and motive for activity. They were not highly educated; but they had pleasure in books and lectures, in correspondence with home, and had their minds so open to fresh ideas as to be drawn off from thoughts of themselves and their own concerns.”
English friends were particularly kind in their expressions of approval. One said, “The Lowell Offering is probably exciting more attention in England than any other American publication. It is talked of in the political, as well as in the literary world.... It has given rise to a new idea, that there may be mind among the spindles.... The book is a stubborn fact.”