Caroline (Howard) Gilman (8 October 1794-15 September 1888) is a writer whose reputation rose and fell during her lifetime, but whose work in the domestic novel presents possibilities for critical investigation today. Born in the North, she lived much of her life in the South, and her divided loyalties prior to the outbreak of the Civil War pose interesting problems for the literary researcher. More importantly, in her attitude toward women she added a fresh dimension to the sentimental nineteenth-century domestic novel, and so, while anything but militant, her writings afford a literary field for feminist study.

The daughter of shipwright Samuel Howard and Anna Lillie, she was born in Boston. Her father died when she was three, her mother when she was ten, and her formative years were spent with her family in a succession of New England towns, while her education consisted of "a perpetual passing from school...