Sarah Barnwell Elliott was a novelist, short story writer, and an advocate of women's rights.
Background
Grand-daughter of Stephen Elliott, she was the daughter of Stephen Elliott, first Protestant Episcopal bishop of Georgia, sister of Robert W. B. Elliott, first Protestant Episcopal bishop of Western Texas, and had for mother Charlotte Bull Barnwell of a Beaufort (S. C. ) family that has given an unending line of bishops and ministers to the Episcopal Church. In the early seventies her father, one of the founders of the University of the South, removed his family from Georgia, where Sarah was born, to Sewanee, Tcnn. , site of that institution. There on the Cumberland Plateau, except for a year abroad and seven in New York, she lived and died.
Education
To home education were added lessons from Sewanee professors and a course, in 1886, at Johns Hopkins.
Career
Her first novel, The Felmeres, a protest against a narrow conception of God, was published in 1879. It took its inspiration from the church life into which she was born, as did A Simple Heart (1889), and John Paget (1893). Fame, however, was to come from other sources, the life of the Tennessee soil. In 1890-91, her “Jerry, ” a serial in Scribner’s Magazine, was a literary sensation. The story of a Tennessee Mountain boy, it proceeds toward its end with the inevitability of tragedy. Published in England and Australia, translated into German, not only did it make the fame of its author, but with the novels of Charles Egbert Craddock, it turned the eyes of America toward the Southern mountaineers, the ultimate outcome being the mountain schools and industries of today. It led the Southern novel awray from ante-bellum sentimentality. From her log-cabin study among the trees behind her house short stories, later collected in An Incident and other Happenings (1899), went to leading magazines. Two novels, The Durkct Sperret (1898) and The Making of Jane (1901), followed, but did not rival “Jerry, ” on which rests her fame. She wrote also a biography, Sam Houston (1900). From residence in New York (1895 - 1902) she returned to Sewanee a member of the Woman’s Political League and an ardent suffragist. She became president of the Tennessee State Equal Suffrage Association, vice-president of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference and of the Civic League of Sewanee. In her early years she assisted at her mother’s “Sundays, ” when, in high-backed chair and Victorian cap, the Bishop’s widow received Sewanee.
Politics
She became president of the Tennessee State Equal Suffrage Association, vice-president of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference and of the Civic League of Sewanee.
Membership
a member of the Woman’s Political League and an ardent suffragist
She became president of the Tennessee State Equal Suffrage Association, vice-president of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference and of the Civic League of Sewanee. By ancestry she was a Colonial Dame, a Daughter of the Confederacy, and a member of the Historical Society of South Carolina. She was also vice-president of the Association of Southern Writers.
Personality
By ancestry she was a Colonial Dame, a Daughter of the Confederacy, and a member of the Historical Society of South Carolina. She was also vice-president of the Association of Southern Writers. It is said of her that everybody liked her. To a gracious personality were added charm, good looks, devotion to all things of good report. Small in stature, attractive in face, she was at her best in evening dress because of the remarkable beauty of her neck and arms. In her last years, with white hair bobbed, she suggested rather a beautiful little boy than a septuagenarian.