UI Press | Madeline Babcock Smith | The Lemon Jelly Cake

The Lemon Jelly Cake

Awards and Recognition:

A Prairie State Book Supported by Nettie Lou Samuels

A surefire cure for the headaches and stomach upsets of the twenty-first century, The Lemon Jelly Cake carries readers back to kinder, gentler times in a small town at the turn of the last century. Evoking a forgotten America of lush lawns, bountiful summer picnics, and shady front porches, the tale is set when the day's toughest decision might have been what to serve for dinner or which suit or dress to wear.

In this edition, an introduction by longtime Millikin University faculty member and Findlay resident Dan Guillory situates the book and its charming tale firmly in the Central Illinois of 1900.

"A sophisticated, even urbane novel written by a woman with a perceptive eye for the facts of life. . . . The only real complaint to be lodged against [the author] is that she is sixty-five and this is her first novel. Why has she been holding out on us so long?"--Jane Cobb, New York Times Book Review

"Pure corn, but the most delightful corn we've come across in a long time."--Chicago Tribune

"Melts in the mouth."--Lisle Bell, New York Herald Tribune Review

"[An] affectionate, entertaining, and thoroughly endearing novel of small-town life in a pre-Freudian era."--Pamela Taylor, Saturday Review

The late Madeline Babcock Smith, a lifelong Illinois resident, was born in Rochester and lived much of her life in Decatur. She published short stories, essays, and poetry in a number of newspapers and popular magazines. Dan Guillory, Hardy Distinguished Professor of English at Millikin University, Decatur, is the author of When the Waters Recede: Rescue and Recovery during the Great Flood, Living with Lincoln: Life and Art in the Heartland, and The Alligator Inventions, a book of poetry.