On September 23, 1940, Inglis Clark Fletcher published Raleigh’s Eden, the first in her 12-part series of historical novels chronicling life in colonial and revolutionary North Carolina. Although not native to North Carolina, Fletcher, through meticulous research and attention to historical detail, introduced millions of readers to the early history of our state. Her books were popular internationally and were translated into eight languages.
A mining engineer’s wife, Fletcher traveled extensively with her husband and was first enticed to write on 1928 stay in Africa. She began researching her genealogy, and was led her to the Colonial Records of North Carolina from which she drew inspiration for Raleigh’s Eden. She fell in love with the history of the Old North State, and through the next two decades wrote 11 more volumes of historical fiction.
Fletcher published her second novel, Men of Albemarle, in 1942, but did not begin to seriously churn out work until 1944, when she and her husband purchased Banden Plantation on the Chowan River in Edenton. There she developed the routine of devoting one year to research followed by one year of writing, publishing 10 more books.
Other related resources:
- Fiction on NCpedia
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