Woolson was born in New Hampshire, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and died in Venice in 1894. A pioneering realist who was also a satirest, she set her fiction, poetry, travel narratives, and essays in the landscapes she knew well, from the Great Lakes, to the Reconstruction South, to Europe, and finally Cairo. Her talent at crafting stories readers found compelling while also including subtle references to contemporary politics and problems, plus her life-long commitment to racial justice and respect for women, particularly women artists such as herself, earned her accolades from readers as well as other writers, including Henry James, John Hay, and Edmund Clarence Stedman. Her work was published in the most respected magazines of her era and, when she died, obituaries appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and Europe. She was considered a “true artist” whose “name stands at the head of the list of American literary women,” as the newspapers declared at the time.

A detailed description of her career follows here.

A chronology of her life can be found here.