Elizabeth Allston Pringle
Elizabeth Allston Pringle's two books--A Woman Rice Planter (1913) and the posthumously published Chronicles of Chicora Wood (1922)--are considered classics of American regional nonfiction. The former, her best-known work, is a reconstruction of diary material and of sketches which appeared in The New York Sun between 1904 and 1907, all shaped into a volume published under the pseudonym Patience Pennington. Both books reveal the unique experience of a sensitive and articulate woman who spent her mature years managing a rice plantation in Georgetown County during the decline of South Carolina's rice-growing economy. A Woman Rice Planter was reissued by both The Reprint Company and the University of South Carolina Press, which brought it out as part of its Southern Classics Series. Pringle died on December 5, 1921 near Georgetown, South Carolina.