Frontispiece from The Blind Girl of the Moor: A Shepherd's Child

Frontispiece from The Blind Girl of the Moor: A Shepherd's Child

In this story, a Scottish shepherd named Sandie Leslie raises his daughter Elsie alone. The girl falls blind in an accident when the tree she was playing in is struck by lightning. Elsie gradually adjusts to her blindness and learns to speed away over the moor she knows so well, "for the loss of one sense had quickened another." She has immense agency in the story; as shown in this illustration, it is she who takes care of her father when he falls ill. While the story ends in tragedy, there remains a thread of hope in the characters' Christian belief in life beyond death.

Selina Bunbury and Daniel P. Kidder

Lane & Scott

1850