RAMSAY, Vienna G. Morrell

Born circa 1817, Maine; died after 1897

Wrote under: Mrs. V. G. Ramsay, Mrs. Vienna G. Ramsay (occasional variant spelling: Ramsey)

Vienna G. Morrell Ramsay was both a religious writer and a children's writer, frequently merging the two. Ramsay's earliest available work, Facts and Reflections on the Condition of the Heathen World (1848), is a traditional treatise intended to awaken "in the hearts of Christians a deeper sympathy for those who are perishing in the darkness of Heathenism… ." In the often eccentric idiom of early-19th-century evangelism, Ramsey documents the importance of missions and conversion throughout "primitive" societies—Africa, Asia, South America.

Evenings with the Children; or, Travels in South America (1871) serves the multifold purpose of much early children's literature: to instill moral and religious values while instructing the young reader. Ramsay dedicates the book to the children she has known, "with the prayer that it may aid them in the acquisition of knowledge and that they may all be taught of Him whom to know is Eternal."

The 20 chapters—called "evenings"—find "Mrs. White" taking her two very eager children on an imaginary journey through South America. The trip is, of course, geographically and culturally instructive, and the boy and girl await each lesson excitedly.

The children are models for those reading the book. The young adventurers "study hard in order to get through their lessons early" and beg "their mother that they might continue their travels." Thus Ramsay places factual history within the fictional frame of a woman and her two children, discussing the animals, vegetation, and geography of Central and Latin America.

Ramsay's evangelistic writings remain conventional in purpose and execution. Evenings with the Children, although of great factual integrity, has aged poorly in its strict, unimaginative presentation of the "ideal child."

—DEBORAH H. HOLDSTEIN