From The Critic Vol. 15 No. 375 (Mar 7, 1891)
The editor of The Book Buyer met ‘a long-felt want’ when he published a portrait of Miss Mary E. Wilkins as the frontispiece of his March Number. I, for one, have been eager to know what this delightful storyteller looked like, and I am glad to have my curiosity so agreeably gratified. The portrait shows Miss Wilkins to have strong, regular features and abundant hair, which, we are told, is blonde. Those who expected that she was going to look just like the plain New England folk whom she so graphically portrays with her pen, have a mild surprise in store for them. Randolph, the town where she was born and now lives, is only a half-hour's ride by rail from Boston, so Miss Wilkins can have all the advantages of city life that she wants. As to her manner of working, we are told that she ‘writes without copying and with little correction; she plans her stories, thinks them out before she puts pen to paper; she invariably thinks out definitely the last part first, making the climax, the ending, to suit her before she tells the story which leads up to each one of those clear, strong, often pathetic closings, which leave an unending melos in the reader's mind.’
