Kitty Brown Beginning to Think by Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps
In the final book of the Kitty Brown Series, Kitty asked what it meant to be a real Christian. She noticed her Christian friend Rosa is different but she doesn’t know why. They visited a poor sick woman and Kitty struggled with the proper motivation. She considered her emotions, but they were not the substance of true piety. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” is the verse which Kitty must understand before her Christianity becomes genuine. She finally found an answer when she heard a new pastor preach.
Paperback 8X5.25, 104 pages. ISBN 9781935626268
Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps (1815–1852) was born in Andover, Massachusetts. Her mother’s family line traces back to Governor John Winthrop, the Puritan leader. Her father, Moses Stuart, was a minister and professor at Andover Theological Seminary. She was educated at Mount Vernon School and lived with and was taught writing by Jacob Abbott. She created stories to tell her sisters and published ten books and many anonymous works. She sometimes used the pen name of H. Trusta (an anagram of Stuart). She struggled with God’s view of the usefulness of art, because she loved painting. She suffered a cerebral disease for 20 years, which was made an instrument of mental and religious growth. She married Austin Phelps, a Congregational minister and professor at Andover, in 1842. After her death, her daughter, Mary Gray, took her name, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, as a pseudonym, who later became Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward after marrying.