author
Alice Lewis Richards
Best known for collections like Smiles and Winks, this early 20th-century writer created short recitations for children to speak aloud. Her books suggest a lively interest in performance, memory, and everyday childhood expression.
1 Audiobook
"Smiles": A Book of Recitations for Girls
by Alice Lewis Richards
About the author
Alice Lewis Richards is a little-documented author whose surviving reputation rests mainly on books for young readers and speakers. Library and public-domain records show her as the author of Smiles; a Book of Recitations for Girls and Winks; a Book of Recitations for Boys, with Thoughts also listed among her works.
Those books place her in the tradition of schoolroom and parlor recitation, assembling short pieces meant to be read or performed by children. Because reliable biographical information about her life is scarce in the sources available, it is safer to remember her through the kind of writing she left behind: practical, performance-minded collections made for young voices.
Her work now survives largely through library catalogs and digitized editions, which have helped keep these once-everyday books accessible to modern readers.