A Scarlet Poppy, and Other Stories

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Harriet Prescott Spofford turns domestic life into sharp, comic drama, where a scarlet paper poppy, a baby's name, and a plate of meat can become the spark for marriage-wide upheaval. In these witty, emotionally charged scenes, husbands and wives battle over money, authority, diet, childrearing, and the fragile balance between pride and affection. Helena and Mark Dunmore's quarrel over a lamp shade purchase opens into a larger conflict about class, debt, and the meaning of her "dividend," until a furious winter storm drives Mark into near-disaster and Helena into fear, guilt, and desperate hope. Their rescue by the family dog leads to a tender reconciliation centered on the red poppy that helped bring him home. Elsewhere, Mrs. Pearmain's zeal for vegetarianism sends her into a comic sermon on morality and food, while the Claxtons spar over their unborn child's name and later over nursery care, only to be softened by humor, tenderness, and reluctant compromise. Spofford's lively dialogue and keen irony reveal marriage as a place of constant friction, deep feeling, and hard-won understanding.