Far over the sea is a famous little country generally known as Holland, but that name, even if it should mean Hollow land How land? does not describe it half so well as this-The Little Land of Pluck."
-Mary Mapes Dodge, The Land of Pluck (1894)
While the author of The Land of Pluck (1894), Mary Mapes Dodge, began her career as the editor of a children's magazine, she started writing stories to support her children after her husband's death. The first half of this collection, "The Land of Pluck, " is organized as a book in its own right, consisting of previously published stories about Holland. The stories and sketches composing the second part were published in this book for the first time. The frontispiece "Two Boys of Holland" has been engraved from a fine Dutch painting, attributed to Albert Cuyp, one of the leading Dutch Golden Age painters. The rest of the stories are also illustrated with beautiful line drawings.