author
Christian Reid
1846–1920
A popular Southern novelist of the late 19th century, she wrote under the pen name Christian Reid and helped give western North Carolina its enduring nickname, “the Land of the Sky.” Her fiction blended romance, regional detail, and a strong sense of Catholic faith.
3 Audiobooks
Fairy Gold
by Christian Reid
A Comedy of Elopement
by Christian Reid
"The land of the sky" : or, Adventures in mountain by-ways
by Christian Reid
About the author
Born Frances Christine Fisher in Salisbury, North Carolina, on July 5, 1846, she published as Christian Reid and became one of the South’s best-known novelists after the Civil War. She brought out her first novel, Valerie Aylmer, in 1870 and went on to write dozens of books over a long career.
Her best-known work is The Land of the Sky, a novel so influential that its title became a lasting nickname for the mountains of western North Carolina. Many of her stories drew on Southern settings and society, and readers were especially drawn to her lively romances and strong sense of place.
Reid was also known as a Catholic writer at a time when that identity stood out in American literary life. She continued writing into the early 20th century and died on March 24, 1920, leaving behind a large body of popular fiction and a notable place in North Carolina literary history.