author
Margaret Hill McCarter
1860–1938
Best known in her day as Kansas’s most prominent woman novelist, she wrote popular stories that brought prairie life and frontier history to a wide audience. Before her literary career took off, she worked as a teacher and school principal, experiences that helped shape her practical, people-centered writing.
5 Audiobooks
A Master's Degree
by Margaret Hill McCarter
Winning the Wilderness
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
Born in Indiana on May 2, 1860, Margaret Hill McCarter studied at Earlham College and graduated from the State Normal School at Terre Haute in 1884. She moved into education early, teaching in Indiana and later serving as principal of the high school in Arkansaw City, Kansas. In 1886 she married James McCarter and eventually settled in Topeka.
McCarter became well known in the early 20th century for novels and stories set on the Kansas prairies. Contemporary sources describe her as the best-known and highest-paid novelist in Kansas at the time, and her work often drew on regional history, pioneer life, and the people of the Midwest. She also took part in club and civic life, adding to her influence beyond literature.
She died in Topeka on August 31, 1938. Today she is remembered as a prolific Kansas author who helped turn local history and frontier experience into widely read popular fiction.