Miss Grief and Other Stories

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) was one of the few nineteenth-century women writers considered the equal of her male peers. Harper & Brothers was so enamoured of her work that the firm agreed to publish whatever she could write.

In this collection, Rioux has chosen fiction spanning Woolson's life, including "In Sloane Street," which has not been published since it first appeared in Harper's Bazaar. Woolson's stories travel from the rural Midwest to the deep South and then across the Atlantic to Italy and England.

Her strong characters and indelible settings provide continuity throughout Miss Grief and Other Stories, as do her concerns with passion, creativity, imagination, and the demands of society. Whether portraying the keeper of a Union soldiers' cemetery in the defeated South, a woman writer whose genius goes unrecognised, or the expatriate denizens of Florence, Woolson's deft characterisation and subtlety create a broad landscape of Americans and their ways, no matter where they lived.