Category: Authors

Southern Novelist in the Civil War Era Author Augusta Evans (1835-1909) wrote nine novels about Southern women that were among the most popular fiction in nineteenth-century America. Her novels Beulah and St. Elmo are the best-known. Given her support for the Confederate States of America and her literary activities during the Civil War, she decisively added to the literary and cultural development of the Confederacy. Early Years Augusta Jane Evans was born May 8, 1835 in Columbus, Georgia, the oldest of eight children of well-to-do parents Matthew Ryan Evans and Sarah Skrine Howard Evans. As a young girl in 19th century America Augusta received little in the way of a formal education. She was tutored her at home by her…

Writer and Plantation Mistress in the Civil War Era Louisa Susanna McCord, political theorist, essayist, poet and book reviewer, was almost unique among antebellum southern women. Her published works fill two volumes and deal with subjects hardly touched by her female contemporaries. At the same time, she ran a plantation, supported her family and was the hard-hitting superintendent of an army hospital during the Civil War. She was in many ways an emancipated woman. Childhood and Early Years On December 3, 1810 Louisa Susanna Cheves was born into the aristocratic Charleston, South Carolina family of Langdon and Mary Dulles Cheves. Louisa was one of fourteen children, eight of whom died before 1860. Her father was a politician and her mother’s…

Editor, Journalist and Newspaper Publisher Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884) was a journalist, publisher, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. She was active as a writer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and as a publisher and editor in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where she founded a string of newspapers and regularly wrote for them. Jane Grey Cannon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 6, 1815, the daughter of a Scotch-Irish chair maker. When her father died in 1827, her mother Mary was left with three children to support. She put Jane to work painting on velvet and making lace. At the age of fourteen, Jane became a schoolteacher. At age 21, Jane married farmer James Swisshelm, over her mother’s objections. Jane was strong-willed, and…

Novelist and Short Story Writer Kate Chopin (1851-1904) was an American author of short stories and novels. Though her writing career began more than two decades after the Civil War ended, her writing was greatly influenced by the aftermath of the war and the time she spent living in Louisiana. Chopin wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which are set in New Orleans and Grand Isle, respectively. Most of her fiction focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women. Childhood and Early Years Katherine O’Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri on February 8, 1850 to Irish immigrant and successful businessman Thomas O’Flaherty and Creole Eliza Faris, a well-connected member of the French community in St….

Novelist, Poet and Magazine Editor Caroline Gilman was one of the most popular women writers of the nineteenth century. Despite her northern origins, Caroline Gilman’s loyalties gradually shifted toward the South, and she became known as an important southern woman writer during the 1830s and 1840s. Her books promoted domestic tranquility as a solution not only for her heroines’ ills but also for those of the nation. Caroline Howard was born in Boston on October 1, 1794. Her parents were prosperous and well-connected. Her father died when she was two, and she was raised by an older sister after her mother’s death in 1804. Her formal education was limited, but Caroline developed an early interest in literature. She wrote poetry…