A Vermont spinster is sent to New York by her sewing society to report on city life, and writes home about Central Park, Broadway, Beecher's church and the Woodhull scandal. Ann Stephens wrote the first dime novel and here turns her hand to satire of the 1870s. Phemie is a fool the reader sees around, and the city she describes is exact. Fifty-three plates by painters including Eastman Johnson and Thomas Chambers, whose scenes of kitchens, farms and villages picture the rural America Phemie carries with her to the city.
