Any attempt to reconstruct the life and literary career of Constance Fenimore Woolson must contend with a paucity of information about her. Her original manuscripts and notebooks have been lost, and most of her personal letters were also lost or burned by her friend Henry James. The few letters that survive--including letters to family and friends such as James, John Hay, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Edmund Clarence Stedman, William Dean Howells, an assortment of other acquaintances, and her personal physician--are scattered throughout the United States in various public and private collections from Massachusetts to Michigan to Virginia. A few letters have been published, but they are not readily available in a single volume. When Woolson's niece Clare Benedict, who inherited the writer's estate, collected bits and pieces of Woolson's previously published and unpublished writings, including excerpts from her letters and journals, in Five Generations (1930-1932) she did not date...