Grace Livingston Hill (1865–1947)

Grace Livingston Hill wrote under both her real name and the pseudonym Marcia Macdonald. The death of her first husband left her with two small children and no income to support them other than that from her writing. She produced more than 100 novels and numerous short stories. Her characters were most often young female Christian women or those who become Christians in the course of the story. Her publishers used to remove the overt references to religious themes until they realized the popularity of these books. Grace's maternal aunt was Isabella Macdonald Alden, who was another prolific writer under the pseudonym Pansy. Grace finished her aunt's autobiographical last book, and the final Grace Livingston Hill book, Mary Arden (1947), was finished in turn by her daughter Ruth Livingston Hill.