Bernie Babcock

Widowed at a young age and left to support five children, she began writing professionally and built a remarkably productive career. Sources consistently describe her as the author of more than forty novels, along with essays, articles, and other nonfiction, and note that her first major success was The Daughter of the Republican.

Her work reached beyond fiction. She became known in Arkansas as a historian, naturalist, and public figure, and she founded a museum of natural history in Little Rock that later evolved into today's Museum of Discovery. She was also associated with the Arkansas Historical Society and is remembered as one of the state's notable literary voices.

Born Julia Burnelle Smade in Ohio in 1868, she spent most of her life connected to Arkansas and died in 1962. Her long career and wide range of interests make her an unusually vivid figure in regional American literature.