Nine collections of Alice French's short fiction, published between 1887 and 1911 and gleaned from the larger body of work she began publishing in leading periodicals in 1878, suggest what a popular and prolific writer she was. Published under the pseudonym Octave Thanet, the stories detail records of life in Iowa towns and an Arkansas plantation as perceived by an intelligent and conservative woman; they are in the local-color tradition, their realism tailored by a genteel mind usually too alert and critical to be sentimental.

In 1856 Alice French moved with her family from her birthplace, Andover, Massachusetts, to Davenport, Iowa. Her father, George Henry French, prospered as a manufacturer and civic leader while his oldest child played with younger brothers, observed her father's businesses, and read history, theology, and conservative economics in the library of her uncle, the Episcopal bishop of Davenport. Her mother, Frances Morton French, was the daughter of...