Concerning Love

By Josephine Preston Peabody

Annotations by Rene Marzuk

Lilla Cabot Perry. *Woman with a Cat.* Oil on canvas, 1901.
Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

I wish she would not ask me if I love the
    Kitten more than her.
Of Course I love her. But I love the Kitten,
    Too; and It has Fur.

Peabody, Josephine Preston. “Concerning love,” in The Book of the Little Past, 11. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908.

Contexts

Josephine Preston Peabody’s The Book of the Little Past (1908), illustrated by Elizabeth Shippen Green, gathered previously published and unpublished poems in which the author touched upon various subjects from a child’s perspective. A favorable 1908 review from The Bellman, a Minneapolis literary magazine, asserted that the volume would be “read and remembered and quoted as few poems of children are,” and referred to Peabody as “one of the first of American lyric poets.”

About This Site

Edited by Karen Kilcup and coedited by Rene Marzuk and Josh Benjamin, The Envious Lobster collects earlier U.S. nature writing and environmental writing for children. Aimed at a broad audience including scholars, teachers at all levels, students, parents, reading groups, and (of course) children, the current draft anthology comprises about 300 entries in multiple genres. As the editorial collective expands, we anticipate that the anthology will, too. If you have ideas about texts or supporting materials you would like to see included, please email Professor Kilcup, the General Editor (klkilcup AT uncg DOT edu).