Anne Boyd Rioux, a professor at the University of New Orleans, is the author of Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist and Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, and the editor of Woolson's Miss Grief and Other Stories. Rioux has received two National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, one for public scholarship, and lives in New Orleans.

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Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894), who contributed to Henry James's conception of his heroine Isabelle Archer of The Portrait of a Lady, was one of the most accomplished American writers of the nineteenth century. The best known (and most misunderstood) facts of her life are her relationship with James and her suicide in Venice. Uncovering new sources, Anne Boyd Rioux provides a fuller picture of Woolson's life, her fight against depression, her sources for her writing and her capacity for love and joy.

As an expatriate in Europe, Woolson explored women's thwarted ambitions while challenging the foremost male writers of her era. Rioux reveals an exceptional artist who pursued and received serious recognition despite the stigma attached to female authors.

Résumé
This first full length biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson reaffirms her literary stature and evokes her dramatic life.