Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) was an American children’s writer and educator. Best known for the novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1910), Wiggin was a proponent of early childhood education and helped found the first free kindergarten on the West Coast in San Francisco. She later established the California Kindergarten Training School. To raise funds for the school, Wiggin published children’s stories and novels. After the death of her first husband, Wiggin retreated to Maine, the setting for many of her popular works. Her second marriage to a New York businessman involved heavy international travel, and her body of work began to include travel books, as well as her children’s literature and educational materials.

The Romance of a Christmas Card

Kate Douglas Wiggin
Like Willa Cather’s “The Burglar’s Christmas,” this 1916 tale by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923), an American writer and educator best known for her childhood classic Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), concerns the return of not one, but two prodigal sons for Christmas.