The TBR File - Mrs Wiggs of The Cabbage Patch by Alice Hegan

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Hegan Rice published 1901 was a big bestseller in it’s day and that always interests me.  So many authors and novels from the early 20th century have been forgotten but thanks to kindle people are beginning to read these books again.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch is a sweet novel which gives us important advise about life. The main character is Mrs. Wiggs, a widow living with her children in a very poor part of Louisville, Kentucky called the Cabbage Patch. The people who live there have very little and yet despite this Mrs. Wiggs has an optimistic spirit. She tries to see the best in life, never gives up and she loves her children dearly. It’s not great literature but I enjoyed it. Here is Mrs Wiggs giving her philosophy of life:

“Lots of folks is walkin’ ’round jes’ as dead as they’ll ever be. I believe in gittin’ as much good outen life as you kin—not that I ever set out to look fer happiness; seems like the folks that does that never finds it. I jes’ do the best I kin where the good Lord put me at, an’ it looks like I got a happy feelin’ in me ‘most all the time.”

Who was the author Alice Hegan Rice? She was a prolific novelist born in 1870 in Shelbyville, Kentucky and she came from a privileged background. When she was a young woman she worked at a mission in a very poor part of Louisville, Kentucky. It was a life changing experience and she wrote Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch based on her work at the mission.  Alice Hagen Rice would later help found the Cabbage Patch Settlement House which exists to this day.