Thursday, March 05, 2009

Happy birthday,
Constance Fenimore Woolson.

Author and travel writer Constance Fenimore Woolson, great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper and friend of Henry James, was born today in New Hampshire in 1840. She died in 1894, when, suffering from an illness, she either fell or jumped from the third floor of her Venice home. She was a pioneer in discussing issues such as spousal abuse and race relations in her work, despite her publisher's attempts to stifle her on the latter subject. Her novel Anne (1882) has a detection element, in that the title character investigates a charge of murder against the man she loves.

No comments: