This article discusses how, following in the footsteps of United States
imperial children’s writers Jacob Abbott and Edward Stratemeyer, Mary Hazelton
Blanchard Wade (1860–1936), the original author of the Our Little Cousins series
(1901–1905), contributed to the American culture of empire. Wade was one of the
most prolific and popular imperialistic turn-of-the-twentieth-century American
children’s authors. Yet, she remains understudied and virtually unknown, except
among a few scholars who have examined, briefly, a few of her most prominent
texts. Given Wade’s current popularity within certain Christian Evangelical
homeschooling circles, and the resurgence of imperialist and othering discourses as
part of the War on Terror, revealing her project and understanding its messages and
relevance for the twenty - first century is today all the more urgent.

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• Manifest Destiny’s Child: Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade and the Literature of American Empire