Sidney is a philosophical novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer Margaret Deland

Margaret Deland

Margaret Deland was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. She also wrote an autobiography in two volumes.-Life:...

 (1857–1945) set in the 19th century fictional locale of Mercer, an Ohio River

Ohio River

The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

 community that represents Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

.

The novel tells the story of Major Mortimer Lee and his daughter Sidney. The Major has turned a pessimist by the loss of his beloved wife, and he vows to protect his daughter from love and marriage and the notion of a beneficent God.

It was first published in installments in Atlantic Monthly from January through October 1890.

External links

• Sidney (1890) (Google Books e-text)