American novelist Mary Mapes Dodge's work Hans Brinker was first released in 1865. The book is set in the Netherlands and is both a story of adolescent honor and a vivid fictional depiction of Dutch life in the early 19th century. The exquisite silver skates awarded to the victor of the ice skating competition Hans Brinker aspires to compete in are referenced in the book's title. American readers were introduced to Dutch speed skating through the book, and Hans Brinker continues to be portrayed in American media as the ideal speed skater. The book is also significant for making the tale of the young Dutch boy who uses his finger to plug a dyke popular. The book was written by Mary Mapes Dodge when she was 34 years old; she had never been to the Netherlands before the book was released. The extensive, multi-volume history books The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856) and History of the United Netherlands by John L. Motley served as inspiration for her (1860–1867). Dodge then conducted an additional bibliographical study on the nation. Her immigrant Dutch neighbors, the Scharffs, also provided her with a wealth of first-hand knowledge about Dutch culture.
American children's author and editor Mary Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831 – August 21, 1905) is well known for her novel Hans Brinker. For almost a third of the nineteenth century, she was an acknowledged innovator in the field of young adult fiction. Dodge worked for more than thirty years on St. Nicholas Magazine, which in the second half of the nineteenth century had a circulation of approximately 70,000 copies and was one of the most popular children's periodicals. She has the ability to suggest, create, and solicit contributions from only the people she wanted to write about. Numerous well-known writers agreed to contribute to her children's magazine, including Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Bret Harte, John Hay, Charles Dudley Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, and dozens more. Rudyard Kipling once told her a tale about the Indian jungle, and Dodge requested that he record it for St. Nicholas. Though he had never done so before, he would make an effort. The Jungle Book is the outcome. Dodge turned to write after the death of her husband to make the money necessary to send her sons to school.
