author
Susan E. (Susan Elston) Wallace
1830–1907
An Indiana writer and poet with a sharp eye for place, she turned her travels in the American Southwest, Europe, and the Middle East into lively essays and books. Her work helped bring 19th-century travel writing, nature writing, and poetry to a wide audience.
2 Audiobooks
Ginevra : or, The old oak chest, a Christmas story
by Susan E. (Susan Elston) Wallace
The land of the Pueblos
by Susan E. (Susan Elston) Wallace
About the author
Born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1830, Susan Arnold Elston Wallace was an American author and poet whose writing ranged from early verse to vivid travel essays. She published in magazines and newspapers and went on to write six books, including well-known travel collections such as The Storied Sea and The Land of the Pueblos.
Wallace wrote about places she knew firsthand, drawing on travels in the New Mexico Territory, Europe, and the Middle East during the 1880s. Modern historians have also noted the way her work paid close attention to landscape and the natural world, giving her travel writing an observant, sometimes quietly environmental cast.
She is often remembered alongside her husband, Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur, but she had a literary career of her own and was widely read in her day. She died in Crawfordsville in 1907.