Balancing literary aspiration with gender limitations in the nineteenth-century South; Mary Bayard Clarke (1827-1886) grew up in a North Carolina planter family that revered southern traditions, but she was not a woman to be stymied by conventional expectations. A writer of ambition and ability, she published poetry and prose, traveled widely, corresponded with prominent men and women of her day, and repeatedly challenged stereotypes of nineteenth-century women. Her writings, letters, and family papers reveal a fiercely independent, creative, and adaptable individual - a woman who seemingly...