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"You see, some folks has albums to put folks' pictures in to remember them by, and some folks has a book and writes down the things that happen every day so they won’t forget them; but, honey, these quilts is my albums and my diaries."

Aunt Jane is a fictional character well known for her gentle folk wisdom and her vivid descriptions of a picturesque and almost vanished way of life in the rural South of the last century. Her words recall lavish Sunday dinners, courtships, quilting bees, church meetings, and county fair competitions.

Yet Aunt Jane of Kentucky is more than a collection of reminiscences about the region of Western Kentucky where Eliza Caroline Obenchain (who published under the name Eliza Calvert Hall) was born and raised. She writes about strong women and the ways in which they make their voices heard. Obenchain was a dedicated suffragist who worked to win rights for women in the areas of property ownership and divorce, and her interest in the social condition of women is evident throughout her fictional work. In one of the most popular stories in the collection, "Sally Ann's Experience," Sally Ann refuses to agree that women should be silent in church; she tells her male audience, "Now it's my time to talk and yours to listen."

Aunt Jane of Kentucky, first published in 1907, is a delightful example of regional fiction that will also serve as a valuable document for those interested in the history of women's issues.

Eliza Caroline Obenchain (pen name Eliza Calvert Hall) was born in 1856 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The author of several books, she published poems, essays, and stories about her native Western Kentucky in such magazines as Scribner's, Cosmopolitan, and the women's page of the New York Times until her death in 1935.

"Heartwarming. . . . Quilters will find a kindred spirit here."—Library Journal

Publication Date

1995

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813108384

eISBN

9780813157443

Keywords

Kentucky, Kentucky women, Suffragists, Kentucky history

Disciplines

Literature in English, North America

Notes

Foreword by Bonnie Jean Cox ; illustrations by Beulah Strong.

Aunt Jane Of Kentucky
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