Hitty is privileged to travel the world from Bombay to New Orleans, although in her heart she yearns for her native Maine. She also meets many famous personalities of the 19th century: the opera singer Adellina Patti, novelist Charles Dickens, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Her fortunes range from being worshipped as a goddess by pagan islanders, to posing as doll of fashion. 

She endures trials by water, fire, and plain neglect. Poor patient Hitty is lost, stolen, borrowed, displayed, auctioned, abused, and hidden. But she endures her fate with gentle stoicism and ends by writing a journal about her adventures. The only pride she allows herself is for the fact that her name, HITTY, is still visible on the hem of her petticoat, in red cross stitches. We follow each detail of her story and keep hoping: yes, now she will have a good owner, the last one who will care for her properly and give her the love and respect which she deserves. But no one can write the final chapter on an antique-especially who charms by her stature and smile. This is a delightful book with many historical details which will touch the reader.

"And who is Hitty?" asked the Writer.

Well, it turned out that she was a tiny old-fashioned wooden doll in the window of the Antique Shop a little farther west. By a very remarkable coincidence the Writer of children's books had been one of her greatest admirers, too, only she had not gone so far as to discover her name. She had been afraid to go in the Shop at all, for she was sure she would become even more delighted with the doll and she felt sure she cost far too much money for her to think of buying. The Artist had been more enterprising. That very morning she had been in and examined her. That is how she found out Hitty's name, written in faded Spencerian letters on a bit of paper sewed to her brown sprigged calico, and also that she was even more expensive that either of them had believed possible for six and a half inches of jointed wood. Still, as the lady who kept the Antique Shop had pointed out, she was "a regular museum piece" and "genuine early American." Besides she did not look in the least like a doll. She had far too much character in her little brown face with its turned-up nose and long, wide apart eyes and her inscrutable smile. Indeed, she looked so much like a combination of Emily Dickinson and Katherine Cornell that it was startling. That made her two admirers want her more than ever, but they knew she was much too expensive, so the Illustrator went home to Albany to make pictures for more children's books and the Writer walked farther east to her house where she was busy writing some.

However, she often passed the Antique Shop and always reported news of Hitty when she wrote to her friend in Albany. One day she had very, very sad tidings to tell. Hitty was gone from the window! Undoubtedly she had been sold to a rich customer and that was the last they would ever see of her. This letter brought an even sadder reply from Albany. It now occurred to the Illustrator that they might have had Hitty for their own if they had only thought to put their money together and buy her in partnership. She felt sure that they might have written a book about her in this case but now it was too late. Still, she suggested that just to maker perfectly sure the Writer step in and inquire.

That very afternoon she went into the Shop, feeling very hopeless about it all. Timidly she began her question. The Antique Shop lady's face brightened, - the little wooden doll in the window? NO, indeed, she hadn't been sold, she had been taken out of the window to show a customer and they had forgotten to put her back. The Writer could hardly believe her ears and her eyes when Hitty was brought out from a desk drawer. Even as she took her carefully between her thumb and forefinger she knew that it had been meant that she and the Illustrator should do Hitty's story. She even began to know things that had happened to her. Right then and there it came to her how Hitty had lost her complexion on a whaling voyage that she had gone on long ago with a family from Maine named Preble. And it almost seemed as if Hitty must be telling her about those days on the Island where they all took refuge after the ship went down and where they would all doubtless have perished at the hands of the savages if she, Hitty, had not saved them. The Writer did not delay further, she saw the Doll being packed and started for Albany before she left the Shop.

In a few days a letter came from the Illustrator who had given Hitty a place of honor in her studio. She felt sure that all the other had guessed about the whaling trip and the Island and the Savages was true and she was eager to paint a picture of Hitty in the Savages' temple in the South Sea Island, with bright flowers and bamboo shoots, and even a monkey thrown in. After that they began writing each other all the ideas they had kept having about Hitty's past. No one in the Antique Shop knew a thing about her, so there was no one to dispute them and Hitty sat on in the studio looking very pleased in her shy, early American way, but altogether approving of her book. Since she was well over a hundred years old, she must have had many more adventures by both land and sea and river boat. It was plain that she had survived the Civil War period and seen railroad trains take the place of stage coaches, and steamboats follow the sailing vessels of her youth. She must also have seen extraordinary changes take place in little girls' clothes and manners. It made one almost afraid of Hitty to think of all she had experienced since her features had been fashioned and her legs so neatly pegged!

That following summer the Illustrator brought Hitty in her own handbag all the way to an Island, the smallest of the three Cranberry Islands that lie off Mt. Desert in the state of Maine. Here she had a special room on a shelf and a cane-seated chair and painted settle to sit in, besides a braided rug, a china cupboard and a small dog to complete her outfit. While she sat there smiling among her treasures and much admired by all Island visitors, her joint owners and a friend were working hard to piece out her memoirs. This was not always easy, but somehow they always knew in some queer, secret way if they had the special adventure right. For a whole week they thought of nothing but this from breakfast on the piazza that faced the wide sea to evening when the gulls would be flying home to Duck Island with sunset on their white breasts and wings. Even at night before the driftwood fire they discussed Hitty's life, until all three were as familiar with it as if they had been along with her from the year 1830. It was indeed a great day when they realized that she had been held in the famous right hand of Mr. Charles Dickens, and that as well-known a poet as Mr. John Greenleaf Whittier had made up a poem about her. It was on the Island, too, that they discovered that "going into camphor" is a familiar process to most old dolls. In this way they live through long periods of time though they are as unconscious of it as if they were under complete anesthetic.

Last winter when the snow was white and the icicles hanging very long and pointed from the windows of the Illustrator's Albany studio, the Writer of children's books visited her there and saw Hitty's portrait which had just been finished. She pronounced this a speaking likeness and she and the Illustrator spent hours pouring over patches on a beautiful old patchwork quilt, trying to decide which one should be copied to make an appropriate cover for Hitty's book. By that time she had received many new presents for Christmas from admirers, - more china animals, a brand-new maple desk, a quilt of her own, and the day they signed the contract with their publisher the Illustrator and the Writer went out and bought her a Swiss music box that played three tunes!

Hitty's story is all done now and the various pictures of her falling out of the Crow's nest; with the Mice in the hay mow; being a Heathen Idol in the Island Temple; wearing her Quaker dress and cap, and dressed as a bride at the New Orleans' cotton exposition, are ready and waiting. We hope that you will approve of them and of her. Whether Hitty herself does, who knows? But at any rate she continues to keep her pleasant expression as she has for the first hundred years of her life.

Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. By Rachel Field, Illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop. Macmillan 2.50.