there is a form called the _cento_. The word
does not mean a hundred of anything; it comes from the Greek word for
patchwork. In its original form, the cento takes small pieces of
familiar works such as the Aeneid and reassembles the segments--
anywhere from a few words to two full lines-- into a new text. As
rearranged, the content can be anything from saints' lives to outright
obscenity.

With rare exceptions, _Alida_ cannot be called a cento. While some
borrowings involve single phrases, most range from to paragraphs to
entire chapters. I (the transcriber) first stumbled across the book
while searching for the originals of some quoted passages in _Alonzo and
Melissa_. This novel turns out to have been one of _Alida_'s favorite
sources, contributing a solid six-chapter block as well as many shorter
segments. Appropriately, _Alonzo and Melissa_ was itself pirated; its
credited author did not actually write the book. Conversely, a number of
other sources were formally copyrighted-- sometimes in the same office
where the copyright of _Alida_ was filed.

Only about half the sources (by rough word count) have been identified.
Isolated phrases-- three or four significant words-- were disregarded
unless they were very unusual, or from a source quoted many other times.
Unidentified sources include:

-- most of the longer poetry
-- discussions of education (female and general)
-- religious material, probably from a then-new denomination such as
Baptist or Methodist
-- most references to the secondary character Mr. More (apparently
from a single source, possibly a subplot in some other book)

If you come across a long passage that you recognize, e-mail lucy2424
at sbcglobal dot net.]

Alida: The Author

One of the few things definitely known about Amelia Stratton Comfield,
the author of _Alida_, is what she looked like in 1852, when her
portrait was painted by David Rogers. A smaller form of the painting
is included with the HTML version of this file. At time of preparation
(mid-2010), the original was online at the Smithsonian collection:
http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/

Amelia Stratton Comfield was probably related to Southern writer and
educator Catherine Stratton Ladd (1808-1899), who wrote under a number
of pseudonyms--including "Alida".

Alida: Chronology

The chronology is internally consistent: that is, the passage of time
based on descriptions of seasons agrees with datable externa