Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps( 1844–1911),Massachusetts author, daughter of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, continued her mother's interest in religious fiction by writing her fervently emotional novel The Gates Ajar (1868), which is less a novel than a series of conversations by fictional characters concerning the beauties of Heaven. The immense popularity of this work, which seems to have brought solace to innumerable women, was continued in other fictional discussions of the future life: Beyond the Gates (1883), recounting the dream of a woman who thinks she dies and goes to Heaven; The Gates Between (1887), telling the afterlife adventures of an agnostic doctor; and Within the Gates (1901), a reworking of the latter novel. Hedged In (1870), a novel having as its theme the hypocrisy of society in its treatment of women who transgress against conventional moral standards, was followed by other pleas for social justice...
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