author
Margaret Hill McCarter
1860–1938
A popular early 20th-century storyteller, she brought the Kansas prairie to life in historical novels that mixed frontier history with romance and adventure. Before her writing career took off, she spent years as a teacher, and that grounding in place and people shaped much of her fiction.
5 Audiobooks
Winning the Wilderness
by Margaret Hill McCarter
A Master's Degree
by Margaret Hill McCarter
Vanguards of the Plains: A Romance of the Old Santa Fé Trail
by Margaret Hill McCarter
The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas
by Margaret Hill McCarter
The Reclaimers
by Margaret Hill McCarter
About the author
Margaret Hill McCarter was an American teacher and novelist, born on May 2, 1860, in Indiana and later closely identified with Kansas. She studied at Earlham College and graduated from the Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute in 1884, then moved to Topeka in 1888, where she taught English at Topeka High School for nearly six years.
She became especially well known for novels set on the Kansas prairies, drawing on regional history and pioneer life. Contemporary and historical reference sources describe her as one of the best-known Kansas novelists of her time, and Kansas historical sources note that she was notably successful and widely read in the early 1900s.
McCarter died in Topeka, Kansas, on August 31, 1938. Her work remains tied to the literary and cultural history of Kansas, where she is remembered as a writer who helped turn local landscapes and stories into popular fiction.