The Lamplighter

Research Status: Moderate Last Updated: 2026-05-31 Diary Coverage: Carnet 005 (May 1873)

Overview

The Lamplighter (1854) is an American novel by Maria Susanna Cummins (1827–1866), published in Boston by John P. Jewett. It is a female Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel) following Gertrude Flint, an orphan girl rescued from an abusive guardian by a kindly lamplighter named Trueman Flint, who raises her with Christian virtue and love. The book explores themes of religious faith, redemption, and female perseverance. On publication it sold 40,000 copies within eight weeks, making it one of the bestselling American novels of its time. (Source: Wikipedia, "The Lamplighter".)

Relevance to Marie

Marie was reading The Lamplighter (or more precisely, a companion novel by the same author) during her May 1873 Geneva trip. She mentions it as "Mabel Vaughan" (actually a separate novel) "by the author of The Lamplighter" — confirming she knew The Lamplighter as the author's signature work. The Rice family also had a copy of a novel by "Neville" (Satanella) during the same journey.

Diary References

• May 22, 1873 (005.0024): Marie mentions "Mabel Waughan by the author of 'The Lamplighter'" — a book she lost and needs to replace.

Research Notes

"Mabel Vaughan" (1857), the book Marie actually lost, is a later novel by Maria Cummins. Marie identifies it by reference to the more famous The Lamplighter, showing familiarity with the Cummins corpus. Both books were widely circulated in French and English reading circles in the 1870s.