Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice (1870–1942) was an American novelist from Louisville, Kentucky. Her first book, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901), drawn from her volunteer work in a Louisville slum, sold hundreds of thousands of copies, was adapted for the stage and filmed several times. She followed it with Lovey Mary, Sandy, Mr. Opp, A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill and other novels of Kentucky life, written with humor and an optimism that was sometimes criticized but widely loved. She married the poet Cale Young Rice in 1902 and helped found the Cabbage Patch Settlement House, which still operates in Louisville.