E.D.E.N. Southworth

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E.D.E.N. Southworth (1819–1899) was born in Washington, DC, to Susannah Wailes and Charles LeCompte Nevitte, a Virginia merchant. In 1840 she married inventor Frederick H. Southworth. After the birth of their second child in 1844, Frederick abandoned his family in search of gold. Southworth began to write stories to support herself and her children, writing more than sixty novels in the latter part of the nineteenth century and becoming the most popular American novelist of her day.