Grace Elizabeth King (1851–1932)

Grace Elizabeth King was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father was a prominent lawyer, slave owner, and part owner of a sugar plantation.

During the Civil War, the family took refuge at the plantation and the children continued their education with their parents and maternal grandmother. After the war, King returned to New Orleans and attended French-speaking Catholic convent schools. The family struggled financially, having lost most of their wealth and property in the war, which later was reflected both in King's fiction and in her efforts to be financially independent. In 1884, she met Julia Ward Howe and joined her literary club, the Pan Gnostics. Each week, the members met to discuss literary subjects and hear an original paper prepared by a member. King's paper "Heroines of Novels" became her first published work in 1885 when it appeared in the New Orleans Times-Democrat. While attending the 1885 Cotton Centennial Exposition, King met Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine. The following morning, she wrote the short story "Monsieur Motte," which was published anonymously in the New Princeton Review in 1886. With the encouragement of her friend and mentor Charles Dudley Warner, King wrote more of the story and published it as a novel called Monsieur Motte in 1888. After this, King began writing short stories for Harper's Magazine; many of them appeared in her 1892 collection Tales of a Time and Place. King also wrote novellas, memoirs, and biography. Another collection of her short stories, Balcony Stories, was published in 1893.
In the 1890s, she began writing New Orleans history, the first southern woman to do so. She served as the secretary, vice-president, and president of the Louisiana Historical Society for more than 30 years. Throughout her literary career, she befriended and corresponded with many of the notable writers and literary critics of her day, including Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and frequently entertained them at her home. She also became part of an American-French-British network of women she met while traveling, including Sarah Orne Jewett, Anne Clough, and Ruth McEnery Stuart.