author
Alice Wellington Rollins
1847–1897
Best remembered for vivid writing on New York tenement life and for travel pieces about the American West, this 19th-century American author worked across essays, fiction, poetry, and children's verse. Her career joined social observation with a lively interest in everyday experience.
1 Audiobook
The Ring of Amethyst
by Alice Wellington Rollins
About the author
Born in Boston on June 12, 1847, Alice Wellington Rollins became a versatile American writer whose work ranged from essays and novels to stories and children's poetry. She was educated first at home by her father, then in Boston schools, and also spent a year studying in Europe.
She gained particular notice in the 1880s for articles describing harsh conditions in New York tenements, and she also wrote engagingly about travel in the American West. Her books include The Ring of Amethyst, The Story of a Ranch, and The Story of Azron, showing how comfortably she moved between fiction and observation.
Rollins died on December 5, 1897. Though not as widely read today as some of her contemporaries, she stands out as a writer who brought curiosity, sympathy, and a strong eye for place to many different kinds of work.