Elinor Macartney Lane

Born in Maryland in 1864, Elinor Macartney Lane became known as an American novelist at the turn of the twentieth century. She first published short stories, then built a reputation with three novels: Mills of God (1901), Nancy Stair (1904), and Katrine (1909).

Lane was especially popular in the first decade of the 1900s, when her fiction reached a broad audience. Her work sits in that lively period of American popular literature when magazine writing and novels often went hand in hand.

She died on March 15, 1909. Though not as widely read now as some of her contemporaries, she remains an interesting figure for readers who enjoy rediscovering early twentieth-century American fiction.