Hitty Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field

Hitty was published in 1929 and won the Newbery in 1930. I knew nothing about this book until I read 52 Monday's by Anna Ciddor in 2019. I have kept my eye out for a copy of Hitty so I was surprised and delighted to see a copy at a recent charity book sale. In fact there were two copies which is quite strange when you consider this is a very old children's classic from America - I wonder who owned these two copies here in Australia. 

Hitty is a wooden doll who passes through the hands of many different owners over the period of one hundred years. The exact dates are not stated but I think she was made in Maine in 1830 so she lives through the Civil war; the end of slavery; the advent of steam trains; the early days of motor cars and changes in fashion.

Fashion and clothing are an important part of this story and I imagine a child who read this book back in the 1930s or perhaps 1940s would have loved the way various owners keep making new clothes, some from very beautiful fabrics, for Hitty after all her adventures. The narrative follows a pattern where Hitty is owned by a child, a young girl, and then she is somehow lost or dropped or flung far away. She lives in various houses and settings all over the country and travels in sailing ships, trains, a steam ship, horse drawn carriages and a car. She tells her story as a memoir from her final home in an antique shop. Having lived with various children Hitty had learned to read and write so that's how she can share her story with her readers. 

The original illustrations for Hitty were by Dorothy P. Lathrop

Here is a brief plot summary from Wikipedia: The book details Hitty's adventures as she becomes separated from Phoebe and travels from owner to owner over the course of a century. She ends up living in locations as far-flung as Boston, New Orleans, India, and the South Pacific. At various times, she is lost at sea, hidden in a horsehair sofa, abandoned in a hayloft, part of a snake-charmer's act, and picked up by the famous writer Charles Dickens, before arriving at her new owner's summer home in Maine, which turns out to be the original Preble residence where she first lived. From there she is purchased at auction for a New York antique shop, where she sits among larger and grander dolls of porcelain and wax, and writes her memoirs.

How Rachel Field was inspired to write this book is a story in itself. She and her friend Dorothy Lathrop, an illustrator, had been eyeing a tiny wooden doll in a New York City antique shop. No larger than six inches, the calico-clad brown-skinned doll seemed to have so much character. At twenty-five dollars, quite a tidy sum back then, she was out of their budget. Finally, the two friends agreed to pool their money to purchase her, and at once, little Hitty stirred their imaginations. (source)

I think a modern child is probably unlikely to want to read Hitty - the historical references won't mean much to an Australian child of course but also at times some of the writing feels quite dated and even at times racist. My copy from Aladdin (1998) has very tiny print. I do like stories about dolls (my own favourite is Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden) but as a child I am not sure Hitty would have appealed to me. As an adult I did find the whaling scenes very distressing and also I grew a little tired of the repeated plot pattern of with Hitty constantly (I think in every chapter) being lost and found.

In 1999 Rosemary Wells wrote a new edition of Hitty with illustrations by Susan Jeffers. I think the image below might be the one from under the dust jacket. Here is a detailed review which explains all the plot twists in the life of little Hitty (she is quite a tiny doll almost small enough to fit in a pocket). I have read a few other reviews of the Rosemary Wells edition and most readers who loved the original do not really like all the text changes.