Margaret Sidney

Margaret Sidney (1844–1924) was the pen name of Harriett Mulford Stone Lothrop, an American writer for children. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, she began publishing stories in the children's magazine Wide Awake, whose publisher, Daniel Lothrop, she married. Her serial about a poor widow and her children, published as Five Little Peppers and How They Grew in 1881, became one of the most popular American children's books of the century and grew into a series of twelve volumes. She later bought The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts, the former home of the Alcotts and of Hawthorne, and worked to preserve it.