Set in the USA around the turn of the century, this is the story of Judy Abbott, the orphan teenager rescued from an institution and sent to a young ladies' college by a mystery benefactor - seen only as a wavering, elongated shadow on the wall and thereafter called 'Daddy-long-legs' Her development from an insecure and volatile girl to confident and attractive young woman, in love for the first time, is amusingly - and movingly - chronicled in her letters to her unknown guardian