“Of pure Pennsylvania stock.”

She corrected the New Jersey birthplace with family loyalty to Pennsylvania lineage · Spoken protest, as often reported

• America
• Family
• Identity

“Don't let this kill you. I have run away.”

The brief note left when she fled her first marriage for Horace Wylie · Letter to her mother, December 1910

• Family
• Freedom
• Rebellion

“I say it is meringue, but you will see it is really meringue flavoured with strychnine rather than vanilla bean.”

She warned that a pretty surface in her prose hid a deliberate sting · Letter to a friend, on her fiction

• Fiction
• Satire
• Style