Born on May 8, 1835, in Wynnton (now part of Columbus), Georgia, Augusta Jane Evans grew up there, from 1845 in Houston, Galveston, and San Antonio, Texas, and from 1849 in Mobile, Alabama. She received little formal schooling but early became an avid reader. At fifteen she began writing a novel that was published anonymously in 1855 as Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, a sentimental, moralistic story laced with anti-Catholic prejudice. In 1859 she published Beulah, a somewhat pedantic tale concerned with religious doubt that was fairly successful, selling some 22,000 copies in less than a year.
During the Civil War she was a fervent supporter of the Confederate cause, whose rightness was a moral principle to her, and she devoted much time and energy to nursing and relief work. Her Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice, published in Richmond in 1864, was an effective morale-builder in the South, and even a northern edition, reprinted from a contraband copy, sold well. One Union general was said to have ordered his men not to read it and to have burned all available copies. St. Elmo, 1866, was a huge success with its Byronic hero saved to righteousness by a virtuous maiden. It was later dramatized and later still adapted for a silent film. (Its sentimentality and turgidity inspired a popular parody, St. Twel╒mo, by William Webb.) In December 1868 Augusta Evans married Lorenzo M. Wilson, a Mobile businessman 27 years her senior. While managing his estate and later traveling with him for his health, she found time to write Vashti, 1869, Infelice, 1875, and At the Mercy of Tiberius, 1887. After her husband╒s death in 1891 she lived with relatives in Mobile and completed A Speckled Bird, 1902, and Devota, 1907. She died in Mobile, Alabama, on May 9, 1909.
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