Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell

Who was Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell?

Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell was a female author of America's Gilded Age. She is highly significant both as an author and as a feminist icon in an age when it was difficult for women to break away from the accepted norm of husband and household and as such may be considered a romantic heroine of Gilded age feminism. She is also simply known as Sherwood Bonner, which was her pen name.

Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in February 1849 to a wealthy and aristocratic family, Bonner turned tradition on its head and left both husband and child behind to pursue her literary dreams. Achieving nothing more than a pleasant mediocrity in the literary world and a financial drain on her benefactors, Bonner was nonetheless recognized as an influential and inspirational figure by her contemporaries as well as current students of her work and life.