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Roanoke hundred,: A novel
492 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1948
About the author
Inglis Fletcher
43 books31 followersInglis Clark Fletcher was widely traveled, but the home of her maternal ancestors—coastal North Carolina—provided the stuff of her successful fiction and the home of her later years. The eldest of three children, Fletcher grew up in Edwardsville, Illinois, a small town populated by many displaced Southerners. As a child she preferred reading, debating, and writing novels to other pastimes, but it was her drawing talent that sent her to study as a teenager at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University. Fletcher displayed some aptitude, but frankly said she was more interested in marriage than sculpture.
Her marriage to a mining engineer sent her directly to some of the roughest of the mining camps in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Alaska. Like many pioneer women isolated on male-dominated frontiers, Fletcher turned to writing as a way of coming to terms with experience. She sold film synopses and wrote poetry, articles, and reviews. When the Fletcher family moved to Oakland (1911) and San Francisco (1925-38), Fletcher found she enjoyed running a lecture bureau. In 1944 the Fletchers moved to historic Bandon Plantation, near Edenton, North Carolina. When Bandon burned in 1963, Fletcher retired to Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1928, Fletcher began her much-publicized tours of Africa, which she had wanted to see, she said, since she had been a child of twelve reading about Livingstone and Burton. From those tours came Fletcher's first novels: The White Leopard (1931) and Red Jasmine (1932). Both offer excellent observation of native craft, culture, and ritual.
The documents she found while researching her Tyrrel County ancestors and the Carolina campaigns of British General Cornwallis sparked her interest in the history of eastern North Carolina. Further research in Carolina libraries and extensive reading in public and private records of the period produced Raleigh's Eden (1940). The novel, the first of Fletcher's meticulously researched Carolina series of historical fiction, uncovered long-forgotten cultural facts of coastal Carolina settlement: Moorish architecture and Arabic residents, Oriental settlers and great estates. Many contemporary readers insisted that much of the novel's setting and events was imaginary, when in fact the novel was faithful to history. Each novel of Fletcher's Carolina series studies a specific era, beginning with the first attempted settlement in the 1580s.
The past provided Fletcher with plots, settings, and characters; it was also the inspiration for her themes. Through individual characters, Fletcher articulates her recurring theme: Land represents freedom and life, especially for Americans. Fletcher was intrigued by the possibility for altering identity that settling the colonies offered Europeans; she also studied the complex interaction of person and environment. The process of settlement provided a metaphor for individual experience: to attain knowledge of land is to attain knowledge of self.
This focus on the individual is circumscribed, however, by Fletcher's greater interest in—and skill in using as narrative—historical detail and fact. Thus, her works are most accurately titled historical romances; and melodramatic as some of her stories are, they attract readers decades after first publication, probably because they imaginatively recreate historical events—a form of fictional verisimilitude that comforts the average reader.
-Source: www.Novelguide.com
Her marriage to a mining engineer sent her directly to some of the roughest of the mining camps in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Alaska. Like many pioneer women isolated on male-dominated frontiers, Fletcher turned to writing as a way of coming to terms with experience. She sold film synopses and wrote poetry, articles, and reviews. When the Fletcher family moved to Oakland (1911) and San Francisco (1925-38), Fletcher found she enjoyed running a lecture bureau. In 1944 the Fletchers moved to historic Bandon Plantation, near Edenton, North Carolina. When Bandon burned in 1963, Fletcher retired to Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1928, Fletcher began her much-publicized tours of Africa, which she had wanted to see, she said, since she had been a child of twelve reading about Livingstone and Burton. From those tours came Fletcher's first novels: The White Leopard (1931) and Red Jasmine (1932). Both offer excellent observation of native craft, culture, and ritual.
The documents she found while researching her Tyrrel County ancestors and the Carolina campaigns of British General Cornwallis sparked her interest in the history of eastern North Carolina. Further research in Carolina libraries and extensive reading in public and private records of the period produced Raleigh's Eden (1940). The novel, the first of Fletcher's meticulously researched Carolina series of historical fiction, uncovered long-forgotten cultural facts of coastal Carolina settlement: Moorish architecture and Arabic residents, Oriental settlers and great estates. Many contemporary readers insisted that much of the novel's setting and events was imaginary, when in fact the novel was faithful to history. Each novel of Fletcher's Carolina series studies a specific era, beginning with the first attempted settlement in the 1580s.
The past provided Fletcher with plots, settings, and characters; it was also the inspiration for her themes. Through individual characters, Fletcher articulates her recurring theme: Land represents freedom and life, especially for Americans. Fletcher was intrigued by the possibility for altering identity that settling the colonies offered Europeans; she also studied the complex interaction of person and environment. The process of settlement provided a metaphor for individual experience: to attain knowledge of land is to attain knowledge of self.
This focus on the individual is circumscribed, however, by Fletcher's greater interest in—and skill in using as narrative—historical detail and fact. Thus, her works are most accurately titled historical romances; and melodramatic as some of her stories are, they attract readers decades after first publication, probably because they imaginatively recreate historical events—a form of fictional verisimilitude that comforts the average reader.
-Source: www.Novelguide.com
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 21, 2026
Inspired by a suggestion of a mentor and former colleague, I had long delayed reading Inglis Fletcher. During the course of my career I became focused on reading history books, interpretive monographs, biographies, etc., in my field. I eventually found novels unreadable. And historical fiction? Forgetaboutit.
In retirement I have remained focused on historical interpretation. However, Inglis Fletcher remained just off script, biding her time.
Looking into the series, I found Fletcher was prolific. And the early America series, focused on NC, ran to twelve volumes. Twelve. I hadn’t read a single work of fiction in many years. Twelve seemed a penance from the fiction muses.
And Fletcher’s books?!- almost five hundred pages short. Oh my.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Beneath the story it is obvious that the writer deeply researched her subjects. Of course fictional license is used but there is the fun. Fletcher weaves a tight narrative with passion and humor - in short it’s grand.
It starts with a keen sense of place and a large descriptive vocabulary (keep your dictionary handy). If you don’t fall in love with Stowe you need to check something inner to see if it’s misaligned.
No character is too small to benefit from her novelist’s eye.
The first of twelve was very worth the time. And it opened an old door I had thought closed.
Her works are hard to find (shame on you public libraries). But so far worth the hunt.
In retirement I have remained focused on historical interpretation. However, Inglis Fletcher remained just off script, biding her time.
Looking into the series, I found Fletcher was prolific. And the early America series, focused on NC, ran to twelve volumes. Twelve. I hadn’t read a single work of fiction in many years. Twelve seemed a penance from the fiction muses.
And Fletcher’s books?!- almost five hundred pages short. Oh my.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Beneath the story it is obvious that the writer deeply researched her subjects. Of course fictional license is used but there is the fun. Fletcher weaves a tight narrative with passion and humor - in short it’s grand.
It starts with a keen sense of place and a large descriptive vocabulary (keep your dictionary handy). If you don’t fall in love with Stowe you need to check something inner to see if it’s misaligned.
No character is too small to benefit from her novelist’s eye.
The first of twelve was very worth the time. And it opened an old door I had thought closed.
Her works are hard to find (shame on you public libraries). But so far worth the hunt.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review