Alice French aka Octave Thanet

March 19, 1850 – January 9, 1934

Alice French was an american writer of  stories, journalistic essays and novels, using the pseudonym Octave Thanet – she chose Octave for being non gender specific.

In 1883, Alice and her widowed friend Jane Allen Crawford set up  home at Clover Bend Plantation in Lawrence County, Arkansas. They lived there for several months each year holding  literary and social entertainments.

Alice had a woodworking shop, where she built shelves and  furniture, and a darkroom, where she developed and printed photographs.

Her stories were very successful,but unfortunately Alice, like many other writers of the time, was casually racist and xenophobic, and firmly looked down on people she considered her social inferiors. She even went to the trouble of speaking against women’s suffrage.

Late twentieth century reading of her stories has found some sympathy for the conditions of women, and even some well hidden lesbian themes.

Not really good enough for me. Alice doesn’t get an invitation.