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''The Lamplighter'' is a sentimental novel written by Maria Susanna Cummins and published in 1854, and a best-selling novel of its era. ==Background== ''The Lamplighter'' was Cummins's first novel and was an immediate best-seller, selling 20,000 copies in twenty days. The work sold 40,000 in eight weeks, and within five months it had sold 65,000. At the time it was second in sales only to Harriet Beecher Stowe's ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''. It sold over 100,000 copies in Britain and was translated into multiple different languages. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of the novel in an 1855 letter to William D. Ticknor: "What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of ''the Lamplighter'', and other books neither better nor worse?" In this same letter Hawthorne made his infamous remark, "America is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women." (He had censored the word "damned.") It is likely that Hawthorne never read the ''Lamplighter'', but his letter today is the primary "claim to fame" of the novel.〔Williams, Susan S. (Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850-1900 ), Ch. 3 (2006)〕 In 1950, James D. Hart (author of ''The Oxford Companion to American Literature'') noted that the ''The Lamplighter'' could provide insight into the American culture of its time: The character of Gerty McDowell in James Joyce's ''Ulysses'' is based on the heroine of the novel, Gerty Flint, in a portion of ''Ulysses'' generally believed to be a parody of Cummins' writing style.〔Williams, Susan S. (Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850-1900 ), Ch. 3 (2006)〕〔 ''The Lamplighter'' was widely read for close to century; for example, in 1915, the New York Public Library ordered 250 copies of a new edition.〔Frederick, John T., ''Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women"'', ''The New England Quarterly'', Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 231-240〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Lamplighter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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