Description: Sallie Rhett Roman -- daughter of the South Carolina senator Robert Barnwell Rhett, and daughter-in-law of the Louisiana governor Andre Bienvenu Roman -- little suspected while she was being groomed as a plantation mistress that fate would lead her to become a single mother of ten donning a newspaper career for survival. An accomplished editorialist and fiction writer for the New Orleans Times-Democrat during the two decades surrounding 1900, Roman has been overshadowed through time by her famous male kin. She now emerges into the light of her own deserved recognition in Fortune and Misery, Nancy Dixon's splendid introduction to Roman that combines a full-length biographical portrait, nine of her more significant works of fiction, and a complete bibliography.

In her stories, Roman skillfully employed a variety of popular literary genres of the nineteenth century, such as local color, domestic, Gothic, and sentimental fiction. Most notable are the pair of tales "La Misere" and "La Fortune" and the novella "Tonie." Though she was not of the stature of Kate Chopin or Grace King, Roman was read by a larger audience over a longer period of time than many of her more famous contemporaries. Her life and voice offer us today fresh and surprising insights into the culture, politics, and popular literary forms of her time.

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