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Like many American "local color" writers, Eliza Calvert Hall
is nearly forgotten today, but at the turn of the 20th century her tales
of rural western Kentucky and her fictional storyteller "Aunt Jane"
enjoyed great popularity. Hall's talent was compared to that of Sarah
Orne Jewett, Elizabeth Gaskell and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
"Eliza Calvert Hall" was the pen name of Mrs. Eliza (Lida) Calvert
Obenchain (1856-1935), a native of Bowling Green, Kentucky. She was not
only an author of fiction but a poet, essayist, folk art historian, and
ardent advocate of suffrage and women's rights. As she struggled with
the timeless problems of work and motherhood, her attempts to heed both
the call of her art and her duty to family often left her anxious and
frustrated. The fictional world she created, with serene "Aunt Jane"
at its center, was therefore all the more remarkable.
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