After beginning her literary career publishing children's books pseudonymously, Maria Jane McIntosh turned in the 1840s to writing moral tales for adults. Categorized by modern critics as a creator of what Nina Baym calls "woman's fiction," McIntosh wrote from the perspective of a Southern woman. In both fiction and nonfiction she defended the system of slavery as a Christian institution, eventually publishing twenty-four books. Although much of McIntosh's adult fiction followed formulaic--if fairly complex-- plot structures, her ability to depict characters' psychological lives sets her apart from other popular sentimental writers.

McIntosh was born in 1803 in Sunbury, on the coast of Georgia, to Mary Moore (Maxwell) and Lachlan McIntosh; it was the fifth marriage for her father, a wealthy and distinguished lawyer and plantation owner. The prominent Scottish McIntosh family boasted of General William McIntosh of the Highland troops and Captain John More McIntosh, one of the first...