Margaret Deland

About

An American novelist, short fiction writer, and memoirist, she is most famous for such small-town-America-themed works as Old Chester Tales (1898) and John Ward, Preacher (1888). She belonged to the literary realism movement.

Before Fame

A prominent activist for women's rights, she at one point shared her home with a dozen unwed mothers.

Trivia

During World War I, she received a Legion of Honor Cross for her war-time relief work in France.

Family Life

She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. In 1880, she married Lorin Fuller Deland who, like her father, was a publisher.

Associated With

James Michener, born about fifty years after Deland, was another prominent Pennsylvania author.