author
Adeline Trafton
b. 1845
A 19th-century American novelist and travel writer, she is best remembered for lively fiction and for An American Girl Abroad, a book shaped by her own travels in Europe and the Near East. Her work often mixes curiosity, moral reflection, and a strong interest in women’s experience.
1 Audiobook
An American Girl Abroad
by Adeline Trafton
About the author
Born in Saccarappa, Maine, on February 8, 1845, she was the daughter of Mark Trafton, a Methodist minister who also served one term in Congress. She spent much of her life in New England, studied for a time at Wesleyan Female College in Wilmington, Delaware, and later became known as an author of novels, short fiction, and travel writing.
Most of her published work appeared in the 1870s. Her books include An American Girl Abroad (1872), Katherine Earle (1874), and His Inheritance (1878). Accounts of her life note that she traveled in Europe and the Near East, and those experiences helped shape the vivid settings and observations in her writing.
Later known as Adeline Trafton Knox after her marriage to Samuel Knox Jr. in 1889, she died on January 27, 1920. Though not widely read today, she remains an interesting voice from 19th-century American literature, especially for readers drawn to women’s travel narratives and fiction from the post–Civil War era.