Caroline Lee (Whiting) Hentz (1 June 1800-11 February 1856) was an educator of young ladies and a prolific author of bestselling romantic literature. Mrs. Hentz was of Puritan stock; her ancestor, the Reverend Samuel Whiting, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1636, where his family became prominent. Born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Caroline was the youngest child of Revolutionary War Colonel John Whiting and his wife Orpah. On 30 September 1824 she married Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, a political refugee from France. Mrs. Hentz began, two years later, the sojourn which would take her to live in six southern and western states during the crucial thirty years preceding the Civil War. After 1849 she supported the family by writing and attended the ailing Professor Hentz. She died of pneumonia in Marianna, Florida, a few months before her husband.

After a brief tenure at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her husband was professor of Modern Languages, the Hentzes jointly...