Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

Born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1835, she spent most of her life in Mobile, Alabama and had little formal schooling, learning largely through reading at home. She began publishing young, and her early novels quickly won a large audience.

Her books are known for their emotional force, strong-willed heroines, and long conversations about religion, duty, love, and intellect. Beulah brought her major attention, and St. Elmo became an enormous bestseller, making her one of the most commercially successful American writers of the 19th century.

She later became Augusta Jane Evans Wilson after marrying Lorenzo Madison Wilson. Although her work was deeply shaped by the culture and politics of the American South in her time, she remains an important figure in literary history for the scale of her popularity and for the rare financial success she achieved as a woman writer in the 1800s.