A neighborhood of girls

the long version

This 1896 novel is a fictionalized account of the author's years as a girl in Rugby, Tennessee, the 1880 British-American colony founded by English author and statesman Thomas Hughes, best known for his novel "Tom Brown's Schooldays." Southwick (later Mrs. William Frank Lones, after her 1896 marriage to a judge in Wellsville, Ohio) draws on her friendships to paint a picture of life in a tiny settlement of rugged beauty on the Cumberland Plateau, an Appalachian setting in Morgan and Scott counties of Tennessee. Southwick also published in the same year, 1896, a small booklet of her poem called "Over the Range," also issued by The Jewell Publishing Co., Springfield, Mo. For more on the current-day restored village of Rugby, see www.historicrugby.org