Jane G. Austin

Jane Goodwin Austin (1831–1894) was an American novelist born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and descended from Mayflower passengers on both sides. She published fairy tales and magazine stories in the 1850s, including Fairy Dreams in 1859, and after her marriage lived in Concord among the Emersons, Hawthornes and Alcotts. Her reputation rests on the historical novels of Pilgrim and colonial New England that she wrote in the 1880s and 1890s, A Nameless Nobleman, Standish of Standish, Betty Alden and David Alden's Daughter, which drew on family tradition and documentary research and were read in schools for decades. She died in Boston.