“R” is for Ravenel, Harriott Horry Rutledge (1832-1912)

“R” is for Ravenel, Harriott Horry Rutledge (1832-1912). Novelist, biographer, historian. A native of Charleston, Ravenel attended Madame Talvande’s female academy. Though she wrote on other subjects, her major works focused on southern history and manners. Her most successful piece of fiction, Ashurst; or “The Days That Are Not fondly depicted antebellum lifestyles and landscapes. In 1896, as part of a national series on colonial women, she wrote a biography of Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Five years later, she published a biography of William Lowndes.  Her best-known work, Charleston, the Place and the People, appeared in 1906, tracing the history of her native city from its lively colonial past to the Civil War era. While Harriott Horry Rutledge Ravenel’s works received many favorable contemporary reviews, her books were also noted for reflecting a “sympathetic interest” and “uncritical” perspective of pre-Civil War South Carolina.