author
Mrs. Burton Harrison
1843–1920
A lively American novelist and playwright, she turned memories of the Civil War and life in high society into fiction, essays, and memoir. Writing as Mrs. Burton Harrison, she became a familiar literary name in the late nineteenth century.
4 Audiobooks
Latter-Day Sweethearts
by Mrs. Burton Harrison
A Virginia Cousin, & Bar Harbor Tales
by Mrs. Burton Harrison
The Old-Fashioned Fairy Book
by Mrs. Burton Harrison
The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales
by Mrs. Burton Harrison
About the author
Born Constance Cary in 1843, she is better known to readers as Mrs. Burton Harrison. Reliable biographical sources identify her as an American novelist and playwright, and also note that she wrote under the pen name Refugitta.
She came from a prominent Virginia family and lived through the Civil War as a young woman. Sources describe her nursing Confederate wounded and later drawing on those experiences in her writing. After the war she married Burton Harrison, spent time in Europe, and eventually became active in New York social and literary life.
Harrison was a prolific author whose work ranged across novels, stories, plays, children's books, and memoir. Her autobiography, Recollections Grave and Gay, is still remembered as a firsthand account of her era, and her career as a whole reflects both the upheaval of nineteenth-century America and the polished world of Gilded Age letters.