Mercy Philbrick’s Choice

Mercy Philbrick’s Choice is a novel by Helen Hunt Jackson, published anonymously in 1876 as part of the No Name Series issued by the Boston publisher Roberts Brothers. The No Name Series invited established writers to contribute novels published without identifying authorship, and Jackson’s contribution was one of the more successful entries in the series. Her authorship was eventually identified, and the novel was republished with her name attached after the series ended.

The novel follows Mercy Philbrick, a young New England woman of considerable intelligence and quiet inner life, through her gradual development as a poet and her complicated relationship with a young man named Stephen White. Stephen is the protector and caretaker of his invalid mother, and the central drama of the novel revolves around whether the romantic attachment that develops between Mercy and Stephen can survive the demands of his family situation and the obligations he feels toward his mother.

The novel was widely read at the time as a thinly fictionalized portrait of Emily Dickinson, with whom Jackson had grown up in Amherst and who was a lifelong friend. The figure of Mercy Philbrick, with her poetic gifts, her quiet inner life, and her tendency toward intense emotional attachments that her circumstances frustrated, was understood by readers familiar with Amherst gossip to refer at least partly to Dickinson, although Jackson was discreet enough to make the identification deniable.

The novel runs about three hundred pages and is one of Jackson’s more substantial works of fiction. It is now mostly of interest to readers interested in the Dickinson connection and in late nineteenth century American women’s fiction. It pairs naturally with Ramona and with the various biographical studies of the Dickinson Amherst circle.