She probably resumed her teaching career, but an encounter with the editor of Harper's Monthly, Charles Dudley Warner, led her to submit stories to Northern magazines and by 1892 she made a permanent move to New York. Stuart returned with her young son to New Orleans, where she met Dorothy Dix, Mollie Moore Davis, Eliza Jane Poitevent Nicholson, and other women writers. She moved to Washington, Arkansas, after marrying an affluent widower, but he died four years later, apparently leaving most of the estate to his grown children.

After the Civil War, her father failed to regain his earlier prosperity, and Stuart contributed to the family's support by teaching. Stuart was born on a plantation, but she grew up in New Orleans, the nation's most exotic setting for regionalist writing.

Although racial stereotypes, sentimentality, and Old South nostalgia now date much of her work, Joel Chandler Harris, creator of the Uncle Remus stories, said Stuart 'got nearer the heart of the negro' than any other white author of that era. Praised as the 'laureate of the lowly,' she became best known for her African-American dialect fiction, and at her death the New York Times observed that she 'left no successor' in the genre.

Born 21 May circa 1849, Marksville, Louisiana died, New York, New Yorkĭaughter of James and Mary Routh Stirling McEnery married Alfred Oden Stuart, 1879 (died 1883) children: Stirling (died 1905)ĭuring the 1890s Ruth McEnery Stuart was one of the South's most popular women writers, rivaling Kate Chopin in her fame.

Emily davis conjure woman