Ramona - Reception

Reception

Ramona was immensely popular almost immediately upon its release in 1884, with more than 15,000 copies sold in the ten months before Jackson's death in 1885. One year after her death, the North American Review called it "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman" and named it, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of two most ethical novels of the 19th century. Sixty years after its publication, 600,000 copies had been sold. There have been over 300 reissues to date and the book has never been out of print.

Subtle racism may have contributed to the popularity of the character of Ramona and the novel. Of mixed race, she was described as beautiful, with black hair and blue eyes. Errol Wayne Stevens, of the California Historical Society, notes several contemporary reviews of the novel in which writers dismissed the idea that Ramona could have come from a race which they characterized as "dull, heavy and unimpressionable," and "lazy, cruel, cowardly, and covetous."

Jackson was disappointed that she was unable to raise public concerns about the struggles of the Indians in California, as readers were taken with the romantic vision. In her book The Annotated Ramona, the historian Antoinette May argued that the popularity of the novel contributed to Congress passing the Dawes Act in 1887. This was the first American law to address Indian land rights.