In her short Preface Miss Mitford mentions the adverse circumstances under which the composition had been carried on, and expresses her thankfulness to the merciful Providence for “enabling me still to live by the mind, and not only to enjoy the never-wearying delight of reading the thoughts of others, but even to light up a sick chamber and brighten a wintry sky by recalling the sweet and sunny valley which formed one of the most cherished haunts of my happier years.” And then she closes this, her last work, with the words: “And now, gentle reader, health and farewell. M. R. MITFORD. SWALLOWFIELD, _March, 1854_.” _Atherton_ was dedicated to her valued friend Lady Russell, and was published in three volumes during the month of April. It was also published shortly afterwards in America. She writes to Mr. Fields on May 2nd: “Long before this time you will, I hope, have received the sheets of _Atherton_. It has met with an enthusiastic reception from the English press, and certainly the friends who have written to me on the subject seem to prefer the tale which fills the first volume to anything that I have done. I hope you will like it. I am sure you will not detect in it the gloom of a sick chamber.” And writing to an English friend also in May she says: “Thank you for your kindness in liking _Atherton_. It has been a great comfort to me to find it so indulgently, so very warmly, received. Mr. Mudie told Mr. Hurst that the demand was so great that he was obliged to have four hundred copies in circulation.” In this same letter she says: “I am sitting now at my open window, not high enough to see out, but inhaling the soft summer breezes, with an exquisite jar of roses on the window-sill and a huge sheaf of fresh-gathered meadow-sweet giving its almondy fragrance from outside; looking on blue sky and green waving trees, with a bit of road and some cottages in the distance, and [hearing] K——‘s little girl’s merry voice calling Fanchon in the court.... An avalanche of kindness has come from America, where, as in Paris, my book has been reprinted. Letters to me or for me addressed through my friend Mr. Fields have arrived, I think, from almost every man of note in the States—Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, etc. etc. And one lady, Mrs. Sparkes, wife of Jared Sparks, President of Harvard University, Cambridge, gravely invites me, with man-servant and maid-servant, pony and Fanchon, to go and take up my abode with them for two or three years, an unlimited hospitality which seems to English ears astounding. Cambridge is close to Boston, where most of the literary men of America live, and if I were not such a helpless creature really one would be tempted to go and thank all these warm-hearted people for their extraordinary kindness.”