Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, novelist, was born at Lancaster,
Massachusetts, June 1, 1800. When twenty-four years of age she was
married to N. M. Hentz, a Frenchman, then associated with George
Bancroft in conducting the Round Hill School at Northampton,
Massachusetts. Two years after her marriage her husband was elected to
the chair of modern languages in the University of North Carolina, and
this position he held until 1830, when he removed to Covington,
Kentucky, where he and his wife conducted a private school. Covington
was the birthplace of Mrs. Hentz's first literary work. The directors
of the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, had offered a prize of five
hundred dollars for the best original tragedy founded on the conquest
of the Moors in Spain, and Mrs. Hentz submitted _De Lara, or, the
Moorish Bride_, which was awarded first place, but the prize was never
paid the author. _De Lara_ was later published and successfully
produced on the stage. This encouraged Mrs. Hentz to write another
tragedy, entitled _Lamorah, or, the Western Wild_, a tragedy of Indian
life, which was staged in Cincinnati and published at Columbus,
Georgia. Her _Constance of Werdenberg_ was written at Covington. After
two years at Covington, Mrs. Hentz crossed the Ohio river and opened a
school at Cincinnati. Her novel, _Lovell's Folly_, was written there.
In 1834 she removed to Alabama, and this State was her home for the
subsequent fourteen years. Her first widely successful novel, _Aunt
Patty's Scrap-Bag_ (Philadelphia, 1846) was followed by her generally
accepted masterpiece, _Linda, or, the Young Pilot of the Belle Creole_
(1850). Now came in rapid succession her other works: _Rena, or, the
Snow Bird_ (1851); _Marcus Warland_ (1852); _Eoline_; _Wild Jack_;
_Helen and Arthur_; _Ugly Effie_; _The Planter's Northern Bride_
(1854); _Love after Marriage_ (1854); _The Banished Son; Robert
Graham_ (1856); and _Ernest Lynwood_ (1856), her last book and by some
critics regarded as her best. Mrs. Hentz began her literary work in
Kentucky, as indicated above, and, though the claim of Kentucky is
rather slender upon her it is, nevertheless, legitimate. She died at
Marianna, Florida, February 11, 1856.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New
York, 1888, v. iii); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta,
Georgia, 1909, v. vi).