William Dean Howells conceived of the project in the spring of 1906 as a showpiece of his brand of
literary realism. He enlisted the help of Elizabeth Jordan, then editor of ''Harper's Bazar'', and pitched the book as an opportunity to create "a showplace for
Harper's family of authors". Jordan was excited and hoped "to bring together the greatest, grandest, most gorgeous group of authors ever collaborating on a literary production".
Mark Twain may have inspired the collaboration after previously suggesting a similar project involving himself,
Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
Bret Harte, and others, though the idea was dismissed. For
The Whole Family, Twain was offered the light-hearted school-boy chapter but declined. Howells was concerned about which writers would contribute, especially if he intended to contribute a chapter himself. As he wrote to Jordan, "If you find the scheme does not commend itself to the more judicious and able among the writers to whom you propose it, you had better drop it. I should not like to appear in co-operation with young or unimportant writers."
Hamlin Garland declined to take part and
Kate Douglas Wiggin withdrew after initially agreeing. It was Howells's intention that each of the authors would examine the impact of Peggy's engagement on a different member of the Talbert family. The second chapter, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, immediately disrupted Howells's intended trajectory. Freeman apparently took issue with Howells's reference to the old maid aunt as a quiet old spinster and transformed her from a minor character to be pitied into a major one to be envied. Her character, Aunt Elizabeth or "Lily", is a vibrant and sexually attractive woman who does not mind getting noticed by Peggy's fiancé. Jordan, herself unmarried, was impressed by Freeman's character and, as she called it, the "explosion of a bombshell on our literary hearthstone", but she dealt with considerable negative response from some of the other collaborators, particularly Howells and van Dyke. Howells, never particularly comfortable with frank sexuality, recoiled from Freeman's spicy conception of a character he had intended as a harmless old lady. Van Dyke, who would eventually write the concluding chapter, reacted in a half-humorous, half-worried letter to Jordan: Freeman, who had been single until her marriage at age 49, defended herself to Jordan by noting the changing role of single women: As subsequent critics have pointed out, the rest of the novel became an effort by the later writers to cope somehow with this introduction of Aunt Elizabeth as a sexual competitor with Peggy for her fiancé's affections. The book was first serialized in ''
Harper's Bazar'' from 1907 to 1908. In serial form, the chapters were published anonymously, though there was an accompanying list of contributors and a teasing note that an "intelligent reader" would "experience no difficulty in determining which author wrote each chapter—perhaps. ==Critical response==