Great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper, literary friend of Henry James and Clarence Stedman, Constance Woolson is best remembered for her perceptive rendering of character and her vivid descriptions of the American landscape. Her sketches of wilderness life in the remote areas of Northern Michigan and her faithful attention to character portrayal, dialect, and regional expression place her among the realists and local colorists of her day. Her artistry is often favorably compared with that of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James, and she also ranks high among such regional writers as Sarah Orne Jewett, George Washington Cable, and Bret Harte. Through her verse and short stories, most of which were published over a twenty-year span in Harper's, the Atlantic, Appleton's, Galaxy, Scribner's, and Century magazines, Woolson often impressed the readers and critics of her day with a force that is now rarely appreciated. But in any...