This book of children’s verse written by Hale contains the first version of her modest poem “Mary’s Lamb.” Readers today will probably recognize only the first two stanzas of a work that morphed into a beloved nursery rhyme sung by children everywhere. What is particularly interesting about the original version is that it does not have an obvious religious message. On the contrary, the reader is free to see the poem as a lesson about treating animals kindly, in which case the lamb is only a lamb. Or the reader can see the lamb as Jesus Christ, a conventional association. Either way, Hale combines the amusing story about an animal in a schoolroom with a moral lesson: be kind to all, humans and animals alike, and you will be loved in return. The universal appeal of this idea has kept it happily alive through 182 years of revising, reciting, and singing.

Questions persist about the authorship of this poem. An article in the January 1913 issue of the American School Board Journal tells the tale of a little lamb, born and raised on the farm of Mary Sawyer’s parents in Sterling, Massachusetts. It was Mary who, after caring for the lamb, found him following her and her brother Nate to school, much to the amusement of all her classmates. According to the journal,

There came to school that morning a visitor—a Mr. John Roulstone, a young man who was fitting himself at the time for college. It was he who wrote the immortal lines of the first three stanzas. The poem appeared in its completed form in 1829 in a book of verses for children published by Mrs. Sarah Joseph. Three stanzas the authorship of which is unknown had been added.

Did John Roulstone write the first few stanzas? Or did Sarah Josepha Hale? For now, Mrs. Hale remains the accredited author.

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts