[Gutenberg 5960] • Little Sister Snow

Frances Little (1863-1941) is the pseudonym of American author Fannie Caldwell. Her debut book The Lady of the Decoration was published in New York City in 1906 and would be her most successful work. The book, set between 1901 and 1905, is the diary as a young missionary kindergarten teacher in Hiroshima, Japan who will travel to Vladivostock, Russia as a consequence of the Russo-Japanese War. At the dawn of the 20th Century, most Americans knew very little of Japan and Frances Little's book presented a view of Japanese life at the time that captured the imagination of the reading public who made it the bestselling novel in the United States for all of 1907. According to the dedication in Little Sister Snow (1909), Little was the aunt of the author Alice Hegan Rice. Amongst her other books are The Lady and Sada San: A Sequel to the Lady of the Decoration (1912), The House of the Misty Star (1915) and Mr Bamboo and the Honorable Little God: A Christmas (1931).