Daddy-Long-Legs

Jerusha "Judy" Abbott has spent her whole life at the John Grier Home, an orphanage where she is the oldest ward and unofficial helper. When a mysterious trustee offers to send her to college and pay for her education on the sole condition that she write him regular letters — which he will never answer — Judy accepts, nicknaming her unseen benefactor "Daddy-Long-Legs" after glimpsing his tall shadow.

Told entirely through Judy's letters, the novel follows her four years at a women's college: her growing confidence, her friendships with wealthy classmates who take their comfortable lives for granted, her budding ambitions as a writer, and her awakening feelings for Jervis Pendleton, the uncle of one of her friends.

Jean Webster's 1912 epistolary novel is by turns funny, sharply observed about class and charity, and quietly romantic, and its twist ending has kept it a favorite of coming-of-age fiction for over a century.