Julia Magruder

Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1854, she grew up between Virginia and Washington, D.C. and went on to become a well-known American novelist and essayist. Reliable reference sources describe her as the author of sixteen novels, along with short stories and essays on social questions.

Her best-known work often centered on love, courtship, and the social pressures facing young women, but her writing also reflected larger regional themes. Early in her career, Across the Chasm drew attention for its interest in reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War, and several of her later novels were serialized in Ladies' Home Journal.

She died in Richmond, Virginia, in 1907. Sources note that shortly before her death she received recognition from the Académie Française, a sign of how widely her work was appreciated in her own time.